Fanny Palmer: The Norman Rockwell of the Nineteenth Century?
If you grew up in the United States, you probably are familiar with the work of artist Frances Flora (Fanny) Bond Palmer (1812-1876), even though I suspect you’ve never heard of her.
Fanny Palmer, ca 1876.
Fanny Palmer was born in Leicester, England, where she received her first training in art, specifically drawing, perspective and watercolor, at Mary Linwood’s academy for girls[1]. She ran a drawing school in Leicester for several years in the 1830s. Later, Fanny and her husband, Edmund Seymour Palmer, decided to get into the lithography business as well. Fanny trained as a lithographer with Louis Haghe, one of the founders of what was considered the best British lithographic firm of the time; meanwhile, her husband became as a professional printer.
The Palmers opened a lithography business in Leicester in 1842. In 1844, they immigrated to New York, where they opened a shop under the name F & S Palmer, Lithographers.[2] During this time, she produced a large and diverse body of work—including sheet music, cartoons and war illustrations as well as the better known prints for home decoration—and demonstrated a sophisticated use of the medium. When the business failed several years later, the Palmers sold it to the owner of another printmaking business, one Nathaniel Currier, the founder of what became the famous Currier and Ives firm, the most successful and prolific printmaking company in the United States.[3] (You see where this is going, right?)
Closing the business opened new opportunities for Fanny, who soon had a full-time position as an artist with Currier and Ives.[4] She was the only woman illustrator on the staff and one of the most skilled and prolific artist in the Currier and Ives stable: one of the small number of their artists whose works they issued with a signature. In print after print she gave form to the romanticized vision of American life that was part of the Currier and Ives brand.
She created some two hundred [signed] lithographs for the firm, including two prints that became iconic representations of the United States’ westward expansion:Across the Continent. “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way “(1868) and The Rocky Mountains. Emigrants Crossing the Plains (1866).[5] She is also known to have worked on many more that were released without a signature, including a large number of the firm’s still life prints.
In addition to holding a full time staff position with Currier and Ives, it appears that Palmer also ran a lithographic workshop in her home, where she trained several apprentices, several of whom went on to become innovative lithographic artists and found important lithographic studios of their own. In other words, she created a legacy in addition to producing a substantial body of work.
Palmer was not the only woman involved in the business of lithographic prints. Some were hired to transfer drawings to polished lithographic stones. Others were employed to hand-color printed lithographs. By mid-century, a few who had been trained at the Philadelphia School for Women[6], even found work as lithographers. But Palmer was the most successful and well-known. Her works were enormously popular. In fact, Currier and Ives expert. Ewell L. Newman claims “It is likely that during the later half of the nineteenth century more pictures by Mrs. Fanny Palmer decorated the homes of ordinary Americans than those of any other artist, dead or alive.” Wow!
[1] Mary Linwood (1755-1845) was a celebrated artist in the early 1800s, known for her full-scale embroidered versions of famous paintings. It appears that her work was in high demand in the royal courts of Europe (!) and she maintained a permanent exhibition of her work in London. Rabbit hole, here I come.
[2] I am intrigued by the fact that Fanny (F) got first billing.
[3] Currier and Ives billed itself as a “Publisher of Cheap and Popular Prints.” Truth in advertising.
[4] Her husband became a tavern keeper.
[5] It is interesting that Fanny, who grew up in England and was probably exposed to the rhetoric of British imperialism, uses the word “empire” to describe the push west.
Together, the two works can be seen as visual representations of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Across the Continent is an allegorical depiction of expansion, organized along a dramatic diagonal created by a train track. On one side of the tracks is a bustling American frontier town, with a small train of covered wagons departing into the background. On the other side is an image of a remarkably tame wilderness, occupied by a few Native Americans, two on horseback and two in canoes in the distance. The Rocky Mountains shows the next step in expansion: a wagon train winding its way toward the viewer with the mountains looming in the distance. Native Americans, again on horseback, watch the wagon train from a low ridge in the foreground, not quite as distant as before.
[6] Which we have seen several times before. The school is unavoidable if you are thinking about women artists in nineteenth century America.
Planning a Road Trip Through History (Hopefully With a Little Help From My Friends)
Two years and two months ago,*[1] My Own True Love and I finished an epic road trip down the Great River Road. It took us ten years and it was absolutely wonderful.*[2] We’ve been considering what our next big multi-part road trip should be ever since.*[3]
For a while we thought about driving Route 66, which turns 100 this year. But we’ve finally decided on following the Lewis and Clark “trail.”
Like the Great River Road, which wasn’t actually a road, the Lewis and Clark trail isn’t exactly a trail. The expedition travelled by water whenever possible, so the modern “trail” often runs as close to the applicable river as it is possible to get. The two guidebooks we have warn us that even where they traveled by land, it is difficult, if not impossible to follow the trail as they took it in 1804.
The starting place is obvious. According to Meriwether Lewis, “The mouth of the River Dubois is to be considered as the point of departure.” Our first stop on the road will be the Lewis and Clark State Historic Site in Hartford, Illinois, on the site of Camp Dubois. How far we get after that on the first leg of the trip is unknown.
Part of the fun of a road trip is discovering the unexpected, but we would also love to hear any suggestions you might have. What are your must-see sites along the trail—famous and obscure alike? Which widely heralded sites are duds, or closed for renovation? What little town has a great restaurant, bakery, farmer’s market or place to two-step to a honky-tonk band? Traveling history nerds want to know.
In return, you’ll get lots of stories from the road.[4]
[1] Not that I’m counting
[2] You can read my summary of the trip here and detailed stories of our adventures here.
[3] For those of you who wonder why it has taken us two years and a bit, all I can say is a LOT has happened since then.
[4] If you don’t follow me on Bluesky, Facebook, or Instagram, now would be the time. I like to post things seen along the way that are too small for a blog post and too fun not to share.
Berenice Abbott takes New York’s Portrait
These days I’m hanging out a lot with Bohemians (or possibly that should be bohemians) in New York at the turn of the century: radicals, reformers, artists, and a handful of people who are just plain weird. In the process, I am coming across interesting people doing fascinating things. Case in point: photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991)
After a brief stint as a student at Ohio State University, Abbott started her artistic career studying sculpture—first in New York, then in Berlin, and finally in Paris, where she worked as Man Ray’s[1] studio assistant. The experience changed her artistic focus[2] to photography
In 1926, after two years of working for Ray, who allowed her to use his darkroom for her own photographs, Abbott set up a photographic studio of her own, where she became a serious rival to her mentor, known for her portraits of the artistic and intellectual circles.(Think “Lost Generation.”) One newspaper review went so far as to call her “the best portrait photographer in Paris, which, is to say, in the world.”
Portrait of Janet Flanner by Berenice Abbot. ca. 1925
In January 1929, Abbott returned to New York, for what she intended to be a short visit. Instead it proved to be another major turning point in her career. As she later described it, “When I saw New York again, and stood in the dirty slush, I felt that here was the thing I had been wanting to do all my life,”
Using a handheld camera, she began to walk through the city, taking what she called “tiny photographic notes” of its infrastructure and its street life[3]. Her project may have been inspired in part by the work of French photographer Eugène Atget (1857-1927), who documented the transformation of Paris from the 1880s through the 1920s.[4] But where Atget’s work was known for its wide views, Abbott developed what she described as “bird’s-eye” and “worm’s-eye” points of view for her work, often capturing the contrast between the old and new in the rapidly transforming city
At first the work was a passion project: 266 small black and white photos pasted in a standard photo album, arrange by subject and location. In 1935 she received funding from the Federal Art Project, which was part of the Works Progress Administration. The photographs were displayed as a traveling exhibition and published as Changing New York, which enjoyed both critical and commercial success
In addition to the portraits and documentary photographs for which she is famous, Abbott wrote and illustrated guidebooks about photography and invented new photographic equipment and techniques.
She also integrated art and science in her work. One of her later projects was photographs of scientific phenomenon created in collaboration with MIT. Combining clear demonstrations of abstract scientific principles with artistic vision, her photographs were used to illustrate physics textbooks throughout the 1950s and 19960s.
[1] Short version for those of you who haven’t spent much time thinking about early twentieth century photography: Man Ray began his artistic career as part of the Dada and Surrealist movements. He began to experiment with camera-less photography in 1922, soon after he arrived in Paris, putting objects on a sheet of photosensitized paper and exposing them to sunlight. While he is best known for what he dubbed “rayographs,” he also built a career as a fashion photographer.
[2] Unintentional photography metaphor, but having seen it I chose to keep it. Sorry.
[3] Her process makes me think of the painters of the Ashcan School, who arrived in New York a generation earlier and painted scenes they saw as they walked the city’s streets. (I’m reading a lot about the Ashcan School these days with no clear purpose other than I really like their work. No further reason needed, right?)
[4] After Atget’s death, Abbott bought his work and negatives. She spent forty years making sure his work was remembered.