| Think and Smoke Tobacco was published in 1836 and described as “a favorite old song on mortality.” William Pendleton of Boston lithographed the title page. The artist, Joseph Gear, an Englishman, often exhibited his other work at the Boston Athenaeum. | The 1837 cover for The Roarers was designed and lithographed by New England artist William Rimmer, who did very few sheet music lithographs. After trying vainly to eke out a living as a portrait painter, he studied medicine and eventually became a teacher of anatomical art, first at Cooper Institute in New York and later at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
| For many years before the firm of Currier and Ives was formed, Nathaniel Currier operated alone and designed and lithographed 60-70 sheet music covers. One was for a song called Farewell Awhile My Native Isle. The cover, executed in 1838, depicts the 1320-ton English steamship Great Western on its first voyage to the United States. |
| A popular ballerina of the mid-nineteenth century was Fanny Elssler, who danced to packed houses throughout America. Of the many musical compositions published with her portrait on the title page, one of the most striking is the 1840 work for La Cachucha by Eliphalet Brown, Jr., a portraitist and marine artist. | Color lithography was developed in 1845. E. Weber, a German lithographer who came to Baltimore and specialized in illustrating music sheets, created the cover for The Oleander Waltz in 1846 after producing work in black and white for his first dozen years.
| Weber sent to Germany for one of his nephews, A. Hoen, to come to America to assist him. Weber eventually turned his business over to him, and the firm of A. Hoen & Company illustrated music for half dozen Baltimore publishers for about 150 years. One example is their cover for Bloomer Schottish, featuring the popular bloomer costume introduced to ladies in 1851. |
