Few names are as synonymous with Americana as Currier & Ives, the New York printmaking firm that marketed inexpensive prints to a popular audience during the mid-19th century. Much of the firm’s reputation hinges on the work of one woman: Frances Flora Bond Palmer, often called Fanny Palmer. During her lifetime, she produced hundreds of lithographs for Currier & Ives, including advertisements, architectural views, seascapes, disaster images, hunting scenes, landscapes, portraits, still-life arrangements, battle accounts, and more, all while teaching aspiring illustrators and inventing technical refinements of the lithographic printing process.

Because of gender biases and the commercial nature of her work, Palmer is often overlooked in the history of printmaking. But she was one of the most versatile and prolific artists in 19th-century America, and her wide-ranging subject matter shows her attentiveness to the dominant tastes and values of the period.

—Text taken from the Carter Handbook (2023).