The Express Train

The Express Train

Charles Parsons

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nathaniel Currier, whose successful New York-based lithography firm began in 1835, produced thousands of hand-colored prints in various sizes that together create a vivid panorama of mid-to-late nineteenth century American life and its history. People eagerly acquired such lithographs featuring picturesque scenery, rural and city views, ships, portraits, hunting and fishing scenes, domestic life and numerous other subjects, as an inexpensive way to decorate their homes or business establishments. As the firm expanded, Nathaniel recruited his younger brother Charles into the business. In 1857, James Merritt Ives (the firm's accountant since 1852 and Charles's brother-in-law) was made a business partner; subsequently renamed Currier & Ives, the firm continued until 1907. Starting in 1853, Nathaniel Currier (and later Currier & Ives) published thirty prints featuring trains for those Americans wanting pictures of the then-modern mode of transportation that provided a convenient way to travel and ship goods around the country. In this railroad scene by Charles Parsons, a locomotive (with a puff of black smoke trailing from its black smokestack) pulls a tender trimmed with red-and-gold ornamentation, a light brown cargo car and four yellow passenger cars as it heads from left to right across the image. The engineer, stoker and conductor (who stands between passenger and baggage cars) are clearly visible. In the far right distance, there is a town with a church steeple. For nineteenth-century viewers, this print showed how trains were transforming rural America.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Express TrainThe Express TrainThe Express TrainThe Express TrainThe Express Train

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.