Today I was going through the gallery in my smart phone and came across a late nineteenth century painting of a woman bicyclist stopping at a farmhouse to take a drink of water. We saw the painting in July, 2019, at the National Portrait Gallery for the exhibition on Woman Suffrage. The painting was by South Carolina Artist Edward Lamson Henry and is entitled “The New Woman.” This was an actual phrase used to describe women in the late nineteenth century who were experimenting with newly found freedoms, one of which was riding bicycles.
This new invention contributed undoubtedly to better physical health, as these women would be outdoors and taking exercise. It most likely broadened their social horizons as well for they could travel more expeditiously to nearby towns.
What is interesting about the Henry painting is his apparent lack of sympathy for “The New Woman,” as she is depicted here as a subject to make fun of. The cyclist’s proportions are not even exactly human, and her lithe form can be contrasted with the more robust women behind the farmer. Looking closely at the two women and the man they stand behind it seemed to me that Lamson’s sentiments are with them, and that he desires that the viewers’ also “get behind” the point of view of smirking man and angry women.
What would anger these women? Is it envy that this woman gallivanting about on her bicycle is shirking wifely, domestic, or motherly duties that they themselves might be restricted to? They almost seem to be saying “How dare she get away with not doing her chores! I can’t get away with that!” Interestingly, the museum sign describes these woman as “befuddled.” They looked a bit more like they were, at least mildly, pissed off.
The man scratches his head in histrionic confusion. What is so “amusing” to Henry? A woman “out of her proscribed place,” perhaps?
Some time after seeing the Henry painting, I discovered a painting of a female cyclist from the about the same year by Lila Cabot Perry. An artist friend had posted it on Facebook. The Perry painting was done just after Henry’s “The New Woman” and serves as a significant contrast. Perry’s cyclist is humanized without being didactic. One wonders if Perry was perhaps aware of the Lamson work and painted her own cyclist by way of a retort. The museum sign at the National Gallery informs us that paintings of female cyclists were “relatively rare,” at the time. But the author does acknowledge a proliferation of period posters on the subject. Why not have displayed some of those? A cursory online search would also likely have turned up the Lila Cabot Perry painting. It would have been an interesting study to have Lila Cabot Perry’s painting as part of the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition as well as E.L Henry’s. And it might have served to highlight an ideological struggle that we experience even today in the United States: the social progress of women butting up against conservative male derision and conservative female anger.
For a more amusing artistic cinematic representation of the bicycle in the nineteenth century, I recently watched the 1999 film version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Kevin Kline playing a very endearing Bottom. The film is set in the late nineteenth century - with everyone either in pursuit of, or trying to escape from each other while riding bicycles. It was more effective than one would think and really amusing. But I did not need to smirk and scratch my head over it, or get angry over the lack of Elizabethan Costumes.
Resources for further reading:
https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/03/28/wheels-of-change-bicycle/
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1426307616/braipick-20
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lilla-Cabot-Perry
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/edward-lamson-henry-2175
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1090918_midsummer_nights_dream
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/william-shakespeares-a-midsummer-nights-dream-1999
https://npg.si.edu/publication/votes-women
