Frances Flora Bond Palmer, Lithographic Artist

18thVirginia

Major
Joined
Sep 8, 2012
In a recent thread on soldiers’ artwork one of the pictures was a lithograph by an unknown artist. After doing some research, I came up with the likely name of Frances Flora Bond (Fanny) Palmer as the creator of the scene. Looking into her history, I discovered one of the first female professional artists in the U.S., wh was regarded as a leading lithographer in her era.

Fanny Bond was born in England in 1812, the daughter of an attorney. She married Edmund Palmer in 1832 and a son and daughter were born to the marriage. The Palmers established a lithography business in England until they immigrated to the U.S. in 1842, where they continued in the lithography business, published their own lithographs and also selling them to other publishers.

In 1849, Nathaniel Currier hired Fanny Palmer as a staff artist in his lithography business. By that time, her husband was well into the alcoholism that would end his life in 1857 in a fall on the stairs. Mrs. Palmer became one of the most popular and most prolific of lithographers at Currier and Ives, producing more than 200 lithographs. Although not well known at the time as an artist, Fanny Palmer was popular with the public, with her images used for calendars, greeting cards and advertisements.

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The Champions of the Mississippi, 1860.
 
Perhaps we should start with an explanation of the lithographic process before going further into Fanny Palmer's career as the first professional woman artist in the United States, who made her living as an artist. The artwork is drawn onto a piece of limestone slab with crayons or pencils. The slab is treated with chemicals and when the image is printed the ink adheres to the areas drawn in with greasy crayons or pencils. It often took a week to prepare the limestone for printing; the lithograph was then printed on paper. Originally, the lithographs were printed in black and white and colored in by hand. As more techniques developed, the lithographs were often produced in full color. Palmer's later lithographs often more closely resembled paintings.

Although she produced all kinds of artwork like The Champions of the Mississippi above, Palmer never traveled more than 100 miles from New York City. She sometimes worked from drawings by other artists, as in the Mississippi riverboat scenes, but in many of her landscapes and hunting scenes, she drew them herself, from nature.

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Across the Continent: "Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way", 1868. National Gallery of Art. https://images.nga.gov/en/search/do_quick_search.html?q=francés+flora+bond+palmer
 
Fanny Palmer became the breadwinner for her family while working at Currier and Ives, a company which was the foremost purveyor of lithographs at the time. Her husband took over working in a tavern and drank away much of his income. In 1859, when he fell down the stairs and died, Fanny became the sole support of her children, granddaughter and sister. One author described her husband as:

He was fond of shooting, even fonder of drinking, and had no interest in any kind of work. As time went on, his son Edmund Jr. became a handsome second edition of his father.
https://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/fanny-palmer/

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A Midnight Race on the Mississippi. National Gallery of Art. https://images.nga.gov/en/search/do_quick_search.html?q=francés+flora+bond+palmer
 
Perhaps we should start with an explanation of the lithographic process before going further into Fanny Palmer's career as the first professional woman artist in the United States, who made her living as an artist. The artwork is drawn onto a piece of limestone slab with crayons or pencils. The slab is treated with chemicals and when the image is printed the ink adheres to the areas drawn in with greasy crayons or pencils. It often took a week to prepare the limestone for printing; the lithograph was then printed on paper. Originally, the lithographs were printed in black and white and colored in by hand. As more techniques developed, the lithographs were often produced in full color. Palmer's later lithographs often more closely resembled paintings.

It's worth mentioning that most of this work was done by girls or young women working in an assembly-line style: A stack of black-and-white prints was set on one end of a long table along the sides of which sat the colorists with their water color paints. One print would be taken up and passed down the line to successive girls who would usually add a single color to the print: red, blue, yellow, green, etc. before passing it to the next. On the end of the table the finished prints were collected for sale. Currier's was located in a three story building, one floor of which was given for the purpose of coloring the prints made on the main floor.

This was the process for most of their smaller and cheaper prints which often were sold as "breaking news" items. On these cheap prints there might only be two or three colors used in order to get them on the street for sale quickly before their subject was "dated" by more recent news. One example I own depicts the Mexican Army fleeing from the Battle of Buena Vista, wherein the only colors are blue soldiers and green grass; sky, clouds, distant mountains, flesh, and everything else is left white! The reason would've been that when this printed it was NEWS, so was handled hurriedly to get it out. Presumably the famous large folio landscapes like those of Fanny Palmer and other notable staff artists that sold for several dollars instead of 25 cents were handled in a different manner and with more care!
 
Not a thread, a magazine article! Had no idea so many of these familiar Currier and Ives prints were by a woman, thank you! Love to find more of the women working as water colorists, too- in a day when some awful factory work made life heckish for working classes, seems at least a less dangerous job than a few.

Well, there was an extremely toxic green pigment in use at the time. That's a whole ' nother thread.
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/fashion-to-die-for-or-an-era-dance-with-death.140830/#post-1701100
 
It's worth mentioning that most of this work was done by girls or young women working in an assembly-line style: A stack of black-and-white prints was set on one end of a long table along the sides of which sat the colorists with their water color paints. One print would be taken up and passed down the line to successive girls who would usually add a single color to the print: red, blue, yellow, green, etc. before passing it to the next. On the end of the table the finished prints were collected for sale. Currier's was located in a three story building, one floor of which was given for the purpose of coloring the prints made on the main floor.

This was the process for most of their smaller and cheaper prints which often were sold as "breaking news" items. On these cheap prints there might only be two or three colors used in order to get them on the street for sale quickly before their subject was "dated" by more recent news. One example I own depicts the Mexican Army fleeing from the Battle of Buena Vista, wherein the only colors are blue soldiers and green grass; sky, clouds, distant mountains, flesh, and everything else is left white! The reason would've been that when this printed it was NEWS, so was handled hurriedly to get it out. Presumably the famous large folio landscapes like those of Fanny Palmer and other notable staff artists that sold for several dollars instead of 25 cents were handled in a different manner and with more care!

Thanks, James N. You beat me to explaining the role of the other artists and colorists. But how exciting that you own period lithographs.

The Civil War Women Blog has a lengthy description of the process as you've described. They note that Fanny Palmer or another senior artist would produce a model print to follow. The girls who added color to the prints were mostly young German immigrants who'd received some kind of artistic training apart from their work for Currier and Ives. In times where there was a particular rush, like getting out a lithograph of a current battle scene, some "less-skilled," backup colorists would stencil in washes over broad areas of the print. To finalize the process, the blog notes, "Details were then added to these washes by the regular girls, who would more carefully paint the prominent figures and add touches of bright color to battle flags, bleeding wounds and muzzle blasts." https://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/fanny-palmer/

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Fanny Palmer
 
I'm not always the biggest fan of interpretations of artwork, but this comment about Palmer's best known work, shown above, "Across the Continent: Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way", 1868, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, seems particularly relevant.

A locomotive follows the mountain peaks West as it divides log cabins from unsettled wilderness. In the lower left, construction continues on a flourishing, well-populated town, promising renewal to a nation recovering from war. In the lower right, American Indians sit on horseback in the train's fading smoke, hinting at the old ways of life that are destroyed to make way for the new.
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/308328.html
 
Fanny Palmer had mastered the techniques of drawing, perspective and watercolors at Mary Linwood's academy for girls in her birthplace in Leicester, England, long before she became a prolific artist for Currier & Ives. She also trained with Louis Haghe, one of the founders of Day & Haghe, the leading lithographic firm of early Victorian London, where she perfected her abilities for drawing and drafting. An early New York work, Church of the Holy Trinity, was done with drawings on two stones, one for the black outlines of the church and another with brown ink to highlight the stonework.

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https://www.incollect.com/articles/a-woman-lithographer-in-nineteenth-century-new-york
 
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Lanercost Priory. England.
pinterest

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View on the Harlem River NY with the High Bridge in the Distance. pinterest.

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Trolling for Bluefish

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One art historian notes that before Palmer was hired, Currier's lithographs were almost all in black and white, suggesting that she had a considerable influence on the work of the firm that produced more lithographs in the 1900s than all other lithographers put together.
 
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Some examples of Fanny Palmer lithographs must have been used to illustrate events happening at the time. "High Water in the Mississippi" illustrates the perils of seasonal flooding on the great river, while "Low Water in the Mississippi" indicates the perils of steam boating when the river was low.

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High Water in the Mississippi

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Low Water in the Mississippi

http://steamboattimes.com/artwork_currier_ives.html
 
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