Thomas Worth

American, 1834 - 1917

Thomas Worth was one of the best-known artists for the New York lithography firm of Currier and Ives, beginning that association in 1855.

Worth was born and raised in Greenwich Village, New York, and showed early drawing talent. When he was eighteen or twenty, he showed his first sketches to Nathaniel Currier, the first one drawn on blue blotting papers and showing a scene with two boys driving an old horse pulling a wagon with a barrel of ashes, whose flying debris was blinding the driver of the wagoneer behind the boys. Currier purchased the drawing for five dollars, and published it with the title A Brush on the Road, Mile Heats, Best Two in Three. Payment for that original drawing was the first money Worth ever made for his artwork, and it was the beginning of a long, productive career as an illustrator.

Worth did his originals as wash drawings, pen-and-ink sketches, and pencil sketches, and they were often very sketchy and much deserving of the subsequent refining they received from the lithographers. However, he did some works that were quite finished, especially his horse racing series with fashionable trotting horses. His ability to sketch quickly served him well when recording the fast action at the track, where he was often accompanied by, James Merritt Ives, co-owner of the firm. Worth was an avid sportsman, and loved hunting and fishing as well as horse racing.

Although the most prolific of the Currier & Ives contributors, Worth was never a full-time employee of Currier & Ives. Under Charles Parsons, the head of the art department at Harper & Brothers, Worth also did illustration for many years for Harper's magazine.

He lived much of his life at Islip, Long Island, but later moved to Staten Island.

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