Double print (uncut- with Birdie and Pet 2004.D03.273 FAC #4909). This image is at right. Man and young girl sitting along a riverbank. She wears a blue jacket and floral trimmed hat.
Currier & Ives occasionally produced prints that featured “continuous narrative,” a compositional technique that highlighted the beginning, middle and end of a story in one image or in a pair or series of images that could be placed next to each other. In this unusual example, two prints showing the same young girl were produced on a single sheet and not cut. Both scenes feature the child enjoying the outdoors. In the first, she sits on riverbank listening to a story. In the second, she enjoys the company of a singing bird. By 1850, a philosophy that advocated taking pleasure in nature had emerged in the United States. Backwoods lodges and sporting clubs, once populated by dedicated hunters and fishermen, were replaced with resorts that catered to businessmen and their families. Currier & Ives produced more than one hundred prints that celebrated and encouraged the enjoyment of the outdoors
