The Marine Art of Frances F. Palmer by A. J. Peluso, Jr.
F
ranees Flora Bond was born in Leicester, England, at the time of the Warof 1812. She was rai sed in a family of gentlefolk (her father was a successful London barrister) with the luxury of a "se lect" education at Mi ss Linwood 's School: fine music , fin e arts and fine literature. Some unknown family reverse sent her to America. She arrived in New York in the 1840s with her sister Maria and her brother Robert. Mari a was musically inclined and managed to find employment as a music teacher at The Misses Day 's School. Robert, a graduate of Eton, could sing and pl ay the pianoforte and managed to sell his still lifes of fruit and flowers from a Fulton Street studio in M anhattan. The sisters each acted as governess and chaperon to young girls on steamboat excursions . They made and sold wax flowers, a craft then in vogue-talents a bit too deli cate and effete for the rigors of the New World. Louis Maurer, a C urrier & Ives artist, remembered Frances Palmer as a "small , frail woman with large dark eyes, plain in appearance but of perfectly delightful manners. " Her appearance told nothing of her will nor her genius. Frances also brought along her hus-
band , Edmund Seymour Palmer. It was an incongruous match. His principal talent was that of "gentleman." He was an accompli shed hunter and drinker and made little contribution to the family's support. They had daughters about whom we know little and a son who inherited hi s father's habits. It fell to Frances to somehow ward off calamity. There is nothing in the meager literature of the time which bears on the sources of her artistic talent nor on how that talent came to be expressed in lithography. Who taught her and when are questions for which I have no answers. Nonetheless, there was soon a firm F. & S. Palmer, lithographers, at Ann Street in Manh a tt a n , pre s umably Frances and Seymour, which produced and marketed lithographs. Anything assoc iated with Seymour was doomed and , indeed , it failed in 1851. Still , they (or more likely , Frances) had created distingui shed work, much of it mari time : a Henry Clay packet ship in 1845 ; a California after James Bard in 1848 ; an Empire City of the New York and Chagres Line in 1849; and Reindeer, again after James Bard, in 1850. As the firm ' s fortunes declined , she
"'Wooding Up' on the Mississippi" shows th e Princess at a rural landing taking on wood for fuel, as another steamboat approaches , possibly for th e same purpose. These nighttime river scenes were Frances Palmer's most popular themes.
would do more and more contract or piece work (much of it done at home) for the mighty new Currier & Ives, their main competitor. Ives clearly needed expert help in satisfying the burgeoning demand for his products. Her first signed work for Currier & Ives (the first of many) was done in 1849, a view of New York harbor. There is a hint of her presence at Currier & Ives even as early as 1846, when Ives produced a series of pointers , fox hounds, setters and stag hounds signed only "P ." Hunting subjects and dogs would be one of her later staples . By 1852 she was working exclusively for Currier & Ives , as were, rumor has it, other members of the family. Her business stock was eventually purchased by Currier & Ives. In 185 1 she produced portraits of the clipper yacht America and the Royal Mail steamship Asia; in 1852 she did the clipper Hurricane; and in 1853 she finished the Royal M a il steam s hip Arabia and, with James Buttersworth, the Sweepstakes and Young America. The family then settled in Brooklyn and she became a ferryboat commuter. (She produced a small folio "Ferry Boat. ") There Edmund seems to have