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Lurid 19th-century Century American Chromolithography
Famous Kurz & Allison print showing the great Johnston flood of May 31, 1889.
The print was issued shortly after that tragic event, and it probably provided the image most Americans had of the flood.
The Johnstown Flood occurred on May 31, 1889, as a result of the failure of the South Fork Dam, 14 miles upstream of the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The dam's failure unleashed a torrent of nearly 5 billion gallons of water. The flood killed more than 2,200 people. It was the first major disaster relief effort handled by the new American Red Cross, led by Clara Barton.
According to Peter C. Marzio, the 1880s saw a change in the style of Kurz & Allison's output toward more lurid scenes, including nudity: "...For most of his career, Louis Kurz was a merchant of the ordinary... Then suddenly in the mideighties out of the Kurz and Allison art-publishing shops emerged a bevy of bovine nymphs, naked amazons... but most printers for the middle-class home could not afford to offend the tastes of the market... Nudity on a parlor or dining-room wall would offend sentiment" - the Democratic Art, page 180.
The present disaster scene shows a bare-breasted female victim prominently in the foreground, presaging the fevered collision of catastrophe and eroticism that would emerge in 20th-century works of art and literature, from J.G. Ballard to Warhol.
![For Governor, Maj. Gen. John W. Geary [Former Mayor of San Francisco / Governor of Kansas Territory and Governor of Pennsylvania]](https://storage.googleapis.com/raremaps/img/small/93592.jpg)
