Description

107. Brust, James, and Wendy Shadwell. “The Many Versions and States of The Awful Conflagration of the Steam Boat Lexington: An Update.” vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1993), 27-31.

In 1990 the authors published an article listing thirteen states of the Nathaniel Currier print that existed in three different versions. This article adds a new state of the first version, adds a location for another item, provides some biographical data on a couple of the passengers as well as the full list of passengers and crew, and adds another European version.

108. Miller, Steven. “A 1986 Currier & Ives Lament.” Vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1993), 15.

This brief note by the former senior curator at the Museum of the City of New York suggests strategies for research on the output of the firm, such as looking at sources for the prints, reviewing Harry T. Peters’ research records, writing about political prints, and using the methodologies of the historian and art historian. In an editorial footnote, Rona Schneider says that there has been progress on the C & I research front since Miller wrote in 1986.

109. Schantz, Michael W. “James D. Smillie’s The Goldsmith’s Daughter. The Making and Marketing of a Reproductive Master Print.” Vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1993), 2-14.

Schantz opens his discussion with a summary history of reproductive engraving, suggesting its importance as a genre and comparing the process to etching. Schantz bases his analysis of a reproductive engraving by Smillie (1833-1909) after Daniel Huntington’s painting, The Goldsmith’s Daughter, on materials and diaries in the Smillie Family Collection at the Archives of American Art. The creation of the print is described as well as its publication and marketing.

110. Steinway, Kate. “Early Nineteenth-Century American Children’s Books and Their Relationship to Currier & Ives Lithographs.” Vol. 18, no. 1 (Spring 1993), 17-26.

Considering illustrations in children’s books as the earliest genre images, Steinway suggests that their audience in the 1820s and 1830s formed the audience for Currier & Ives prints in the 1840s and later. She describes several types of imagery as a visual language that formed stereotypes and conventions that appear in both sets of images. Steinway concludes that the motifs became so accepted that the images could be read without the texts.