53rd Annual Delaware Show

A WOMAN LITHOGRAPHER IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY NEW YORK BY MARIE-STEPHANIE DELAMAIRE Frances Flora Bond Palmer (1812–1876) is the most important woman lithographer of nineteenth-century America. She is best known for her association with Currier & Ives, where, after joining the firm in 1851, she produced more prints than any other artist. Before then, Palmer held an independent career both in England and in New York, where she settled with her family in 1844. 1 She exhibited at the National Academy of Design and the American Institute, executed dozens of framing prints, and created the lithographs for several illustrated books. 2 Winterthur’s museum and library collections hold several examples of her early American work. Looking at these lithographic prints created before her long collaboration with Currier & Ives gives us insight into her position as an artist lithographer in nineteenth-century New York, and her contributions to the expanding field of American lithography. One of the largest of Palmer’s early New York commissions consisted of the lithographs that reproduced William H. Ranlett’s architectural drawings of site views, elevations, and floor plans for Ranlett’s two-volume book The Architect, published in New York between 1847 and 1849 (fig. 1) . In this publication, Palmer used a two-stone lithographic technique that reflects her training with Louis Haghe (1806–1885), one of the founders of Day & Haghe, the leading lithographic firm of early Victorian London. Haghe was a famous architectural draftsman, a watercolor artist, and the lithographer of David Roberts’ watercolor drawings for The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt and Nubia (1842–1846), widely considered the culmination of Haghe’s tinted lithographic technique. Palmer was in Haghe’s workshop during the early stages of the preparation of Roberts’ watercolors. She, in turn, brought to Day & Haghe an excellent foundation in drawing, perspective, and watercolors learned at Mary Linwood’s academy for girls in Leicester. With Haghe, Palmer perfected her knowledge of drawing and drafting, and mastered the technique of tinted lithography. Combining a stone with crayon drawing with another stone of monochrome tint, a tinted lithograph could imitate the effect of the watercolor wash often used in the background of a drawing. — 18 —