[Lithographs]: Five Currier and Ives Lithographs of Four Prominent African-Americans and a Portrait of "The First Colored Senator and Representatives"

New York: Currier & Ives, 1872-1894.

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Unbound. Five separate lithographs. Small folios. Each measuring 13½" x 17¾" (untrimmed). Two prints (Douglass and Brown) produced at the Currier & Ives studios at 125 Nassau Street, which they occupied from 1872-1874; the other three at 115 Nassau Street, where the business operated from 1877-1894. All five lithographs are very good, strong images, with just a few stray scuff marks on the blank background and faint shadowing from an old mat on the portrait of William Wells Brown.

Following the Civil War, American print companies looking for new commercial avenues were intent on marketing to all factions of the Reconstruction economy. *Harper's Weekly*, Louis Prang, Currier & Ives, and others produced images sympathetic to both white and black Southerners, and to white and black Northerners. Print images of African-Americans elicited an enthusiastic response from Frederick Douglass. Commenting on an image of Hiram R. Revels done by Prang, he wrote: "Heretofore, colored Americans have thought little of adorning their parlors with pictures. They have had to do with the stern, and I may say, the ugly realities of life…. Every colored householder in the land should have one of these portraits in his parlor, and should explain it to his children, as the dividing line between the darkness and despair that overhung our past, and the light and hope that now beams upon our future as people."

One of the more well-known groups of images produced by Currier & Ives in this period was the "Darktown Series" of stereotypical comic depictions of African-Americans. The group of images here are in stark contrast to that series, and are dignified works of a fine quality, respectfully done. The individuals depicted are Frederick Douglass, author of the famed slave narrative and leader of the American Abolitionist Movement; William Wells Brown, an escaped slave who authored both the first play and first novel by an African-American; Rev. Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church; and George Washington Williams, the first African-American elected to the Ohio State Legislature and the author of the first book on the history of African-Americans in the Civil War. The group image of "The First Colored Senator and Representatives" is comprised of: H.R. Revels, an AME minister who became the first seated African-American Senator; Joseph H. Rainey, the first African-American to serve in the House of Representatives and the second to serve as U.S. Senator; Jefferson H. Long, Georgia’s first African-American Representative; Benj. S. Turner, Alabama’s first African-American Representative; Josiah T. Walls, Florida’s first African-American Representative; Robert C. De Large, South Carolina’s first Representative; and R. Brown Elliott, South Carolina’s second Representative.

*OCLC* locates no copies of these images except for a smaller version of the group portrait, almost certainly trimmed as was the custom when framed, at three locations (LOC, Harvard, and Library of Michigan), and we have additionally located a fourth copy of that individual print at the New York Public Library.


Item #403236

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Item #403236 [Lithographs]: Five Currier and Ives Lithographs of Four Prominent African-Americans and a Portrait of "The First Colored Senator and Representatives" Frederick DOUGLASS, Rev. Richard Allen, William Wells Brown, George W. Williams.
[Lithographs]: Five Currier and Ives Lithographs of Four Prominent African-Americans and a Portrait of "The First Colored Senator and Representatives"
[Lithographs]: Five Currier and Ives Lithographs of Four Prominent African-Americans and a Portrait of "The First Colored Senator and Representatives"
[Lithographs]: Five Currier and Ives Lithographs of Four Prominent African-Americans and a Portrait of "The First Colored Senator and Representatives"
[Lithographs]: Five Currier and Ives Lithographs of Four Prominent African-Americans and a Portrait of "The First Colored Senator and Representatives"
[Lithographs]: Five Currier and Ives Lithographs of Four Prominent African-Americans and a Portrait of "The First Colored Senator and Representatives"