The Fiend of the Road Currier & Ives Lithograph 1881

  The Fiend of the Road shows a man in a horse driven buggy going down a country road on a winters day who has apparently left in his wake several upset horses and drivers .This original 1881 lithograph by Scott Leighton and published by Currier & Ives is in good condition.
American artist Nicholas Winfield Scott Leighton (1847-1898 ) was considered a master of equine art. Having started out in the horse trade to support his artistic ambitions he had intimate knowledge of his subject.. Leighton was considered by many to be the “Landseer of the United States,” a reference to the noted British landscape and portrait artist Edwin Henry Landseer. Leighton’s work was able to reach an even wider audience with the rise in popularity of lithography. Numerous firms transferred his original paintings into mass-marketable prints. However, it was his work with Currier & Ives that brought him the most notice. More than thirty of his paintings were used by these distinguished lithographers to produce memorable prints of trotters Hopeful, Maud S., Smuggler and Edward & Swiveller, among others.
Leighton exhibited in the National Academy of Design in 1883, 1886, and 1887. His paintings are in the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Francine Clark Institute to name a few.