Firemen working on “J.S. SMith & Co.” building
Currier & Ives produced at least twenty-five different fire-fighting prints, most of which featured scenes of heroic men battling dangerous flames. Here, fire fighters climb ladders to rescue residents from a burning building. In a dramatic touch, a fireman emerges from a third-story window with a baby, while the child’s mother on the ground raises her arms in relief. Many featured scenes of offered descriptions of the latest fire fighting equipment. The print was the first to be used as an advertisement by an insurance company, the American Insurance Company of Newark, NJ, which substituted their name for the title of the work. In 1971, Spanish artist Salvador Dali, who admired the work of Currier & Ives, created his own design based on the print titled Fire! Fire! Fire! Gift of Lenore B. and Sidney A. Alpert supplemented with Museum Acquisition Funds 2004.D03.492
