Across the Continent. Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way is a well-known hand coloured litho print issued by Currier & Ives, although the publisher’s imprint has been cut off the bottom of the example shown above.
Sold for a far higher than predicted $50,000 (£39,685) in a December 13 sale held by Swann Galleries (25/20/12% buyer’s premium), it is the best-known work of an English-born artist, ‘Fanny’ Palmer, who had settled in the US by 1844 and went on to become a very successful print maker. In this iconic post-civil war image of 1868 the train, belching black smoke, follows the mountain peaks west on a line that divides log cabins and a small but flourishing town from the as yet unsettled wilderness.