Frances Flora Bond Palmer, Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” 1868

This is the most widely recognized work of Frances “Fanny” Palmer, an English-born American artist who worked for the New York print-making house of Currier & Ives. The print, produced a year before the transcontinental railroad was completed, presents a highly idealized view of what the westward expansion of American industries and institutions would bring to the Mountain West. Currier & Ives sold thousands of copies of this image, and it graced the walls of many homes, schools, and businesses.

Frances Flora Bond Palmer, “Across the Continent: ‘Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,’ 1868”
Across the Continent
F. F. Palmer, Across the Continent: “Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way,” lithograph (New York: Currier & Ives, 1868).

Questions

  1. Question

    What does this widely reproduced lithograph tell us about how Americans wanted to imagine the future of the West in the wake of the Civil War?

  2. Question

    How does Palmer portray activities such as farming, land settlement, mining, railroad travel, schooling, and worshiping? Does the scene of national expansion Palmer illustrates strike you as harmonious? Unified? Do you see any signs of impending conflict? Why or why not?
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