The Great Bartholdi Statue - Liberty Enlightening the World, 1885. Currier & Ives. Hand-colored lithograph. The Edward W.C. Arnold Collection of New York Prints, Maps and Pictures, Bequest of Edward W.C. Arnold, 1954.
The Statue of Liberty is seen from an elevated point of view, to give a vista behind that includes Manhattan and parts of the shore of Brooklyn and New Jersey. New York harbor is filled with ships.
The New York firm of Currier & Ives grew from a printing business established by Nathaniel Currier (1813–1888) in 1835. Expansion led, in 1857, to a partnership with brother-in-law James Merritt Ives (1824–1895). The firm operated until 1907, lithographing over 4,000 subjects for distribution across America and Europe with popular categories including landscape, marines, natural history, genre, caricatures, portraits, history and foreign views. Until the 1880s, images were printed in monochrome, then hand-colored by women who worked for the company at home.