Label Text:
This is another lithograph published by Currier & Ives that copies an engraving—in this case, “A Shanty on Lake Chaudière”—after Bartlett, in volume 2 of Canadian Scenery Illustrated. Willis writes at length about the “shanty,” describing it as “a sort of primitive hut in Canadian architecture, . . . nothing more than a shed built of logs.” The chinks between the logs are filled with mud, moss, and pieces of wood to keep out drafts; and the roof consists of slabs of wood with overlapping edges to keep the interior dry. Some shanties were filthy hovels; others possessed modest comforts of home. Currier & Ives moved the location of the shanty from Lake Chaudière in Quebec to the Adirondacks, and presented it as a temporary home for hunters rather than a permanent home for settlers of the wilderness.
Currier & Ives plagiarized prints from many sources in an age when plagiarism was not regarded as theft of an artist’s work.
Georgia Barnhill, 2014
After William Henry Bartlett. Published as "A Shanty on Lake Chaudiere" in Willis, "Canadian Scenery," vol, 1, p. 42, (1842).
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1954.15 |
