DOI Heft:
Nr. 334 (March 1925)
DOI Artikel:Pennington, Jo: American sporting prints
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.19984#0204
inceRHACionAL
semi©
temperance, the freaks in Barnum's Museum,
reproductions of paintings and, during the war,
many caricatures and cartoons. From the same
press came prints which caused the northerner to
wave his own little flag and others that gladdened
the heart of the southerner. All was grist that
came to the mill of Currier and Ives.
Louis Maurer was the chief designer for the
firm and a large number of their sporting prints
bear his name. Maurer is worth an article in him-
self. He was himself a rider and a lover of horses,
a thorough sportsman, an excellent marksman
and a prolific worker. Some of the prints bearing
his name he designed himself; others, though not
so many, are reproductions by him of paintings,
especially of the pictures of an English animal
painter named Tait. He is still alive, about
ninety-eight years old, and is still a keen sports-
man. Nor very long ago he was invited to partici-
pate in a target shooting contest, but after he had
hit four bull's-eyes, someone suggested that so
long as he was a participant, the amusement
scarcely came under the category of a sport. Only
last Thanksgiving he told a caller that he did not
expect to buy his own turkey; that he would win
it by his marksmanship.
Curiously enough, a woman was another of
Currier and Ives' print designers. She was Mrs.
F. E. Palmer, still called by those who knew her
"Fanny Palmer." Pier subjects were chiefly of
wild game and of sportsmen in pursuit thereof.
J. Cameron specialized in racing prints, portraits
of pugilists and pictures of famous bouts.
From the middle of the last century until its
close, sporting prints flooded the market, but with
the increasing success and popularity of the illus-
trated magazines, they were driven from the field.
They were unmourned and unsung for about a
score of years; only a few collectors, chiefly sports-
men, taking any interest in them. Then suddenly
the dealers decided that the public needed a new
antique; and the old prints began to come to light.
Two or three years ago, one of the big galleries
sold them only in bundles of ten or twenty because
they could not get more than fifty cents, a dollar
or at most two dollars apiece for them. At the
first public sale, held last fall, a lithograph with a
very sentimental theme—"Home for Thanksgiv-
ing"—sold for eight hundred dollars; and early
in February of this year the big gallery that had
sold them only in quantity was advertising an
important public sale, with each print carefully
catalogued. The sporting prints are finer, artisti-
cally speaking, than any of the other types; but
/our sixty-four
march 1925
semi©
temperance, the freaks in Barnum's Museum,
reproductions of paintings and, during the war,
many caricatures and cartoons. From the same
press came prints which caused the northerner to
wave his own little flag and others that gladdened
the heart of the southerner. All was grist that
came to the mill of Currier and Ives.
Louis Maurer was the chief designer for the
firm and a large number of their sporting prints
bear his name. Maurer is worth an article in him-
self. He was himself a rider and a lover of horses,
a thorough sportsman, an excellent marksman
and a prolific worker. Some of the prints bearing
his name he designed himself; others, though not
so many, are reproductions by him of paintings,
especially of the pictures of an English animal
painter named Tait. He is still alive, about
ninety-eight years old, and is still a keen sports-
man. Nor very long ago he was invited to partici-
pate in a target shooting contest, but after he had
hit four bull's-eyes, someone suggested that so
long as he was a participant, the amusement
scarcely came under the category of a sport. Only
last Thanksgiving he told a caller that he did not
expect to buy his own turkey; that he would win
it by his marksmanship.
Curiously enough, a woman was another of
Currier and Ives' print designers. She was Mrs.
F. E. Palmer, still called by those who knew her
"Fanny Palmer." Pier subjects were chiefly of
wild game and of sportsmen in pursuit thereof.
J. Cameron specialized in racing prints, portraits
of pugilists and pictures of famous bouts.
From the middle of the last century until its
close, sporting prints flooded the market, but with
the increasing success and popularity of the illus-
trated magazines, they were driven from the field.
They were unmourned and unsung for about a
score of years; only a few collectors, chiefly sports-
men, taking any interest in them. Then suddenly
the dealers decided that the public needed a new
antique; and the old prints began to come to light.
Two or three years ago, one of the big galleries
sold them only in bundles of ten or twenty because
they could not get more than fifty cents, a dollar
or at most two dollars apiece for them. At the
first public sale, held last fall, a lithograph with a
very sentimental theme—"Home for Thanksgiv-
ing"—sold for eight hundred dollars; and early
in February of this year the big gallery that had
sold them only in quantity was advertising an
important public sale, with each print carefully
catalogued. The sporting prints are finer, artisti-
cally speaking, than any of the other types; but
/our sixty-four
march 1925