Historic, decorative, nostalgic – this series of American courtroom scenes depicts the classic late 19th and early 20th century courtrooms of the American West.

Fred T. Darvill, founder of Darvill's Rare Print Shop, copyrighted and published this unique series of prints in 1933. They have been available only at Darvill's Rare Print Shop - at 54 McAllister Street in San Francisco from 1933-1941, and on Main St., Orcas Island, Washington from 1942 to the present. Darvill Legal Prints hang in law offices, schools and court chambers throughout the United States.

The scenes were designed by Darvill from his extensive knowledge of the legal profession in the western United States, as a member of the bars of California, Washington and Wisconsin, and as a law book and rare print dealer. He also has published several resource books for the legal profession.

Darvill sketched the scenes for all of the images except "The Frontier Trial" using San Francisco courtrooms as settings ("Clearing the Title" occurs in a lawyer's office) and commissioned J. H. Smith, a noted Western artist, to paint the scenes in oils. Smith added "The Frontier Trial" based on a boyhood memory. Lithographic plates were then made to produce the prints you see today.

In 1974 Fred Darvill made a gift of the original oil paintings to the University of Washington Law Library.

These prints are in excellent condition. Sheet size is approx. 20½ x 15¼ inches with an image size of approx. 16 x 10½ inches. They were printed on medium weight paper with a woven paper type finish.