Another Brief Hiatus, or, Gone Workin'

Gypsy Rose Lee

Loretta & Isabella report:

For some stupid reason, we Two Nerdy History Girls are still working for a living, rather than living the life of leisure in Pick-Your-Expensive-Luxurious-Leisure-Location.

Gypsy Rose Lee makes writing look glamorous.  Pretend we’re glamorous, too, as we polish our beautiful prose and deliver our manuscripts right on time.

Or take a look at the other photograph, where Ms. Miller's facial expression, if not her attire, approaches nearer the reality.

In other words, we’re writing and researching madly, and thus need, once again, to take some time off from blogging.  Look for fresh posts about old stuff toward the end of the month.

Flora Payne Whitney Miller

Photos courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.  Clicking on captions will take you to their LOC information page.

The Return (Again and Again) of Big Sleeves

Isabella reporting,

One of my favorite small museums in NYC is the Museum at FIT. Their ever-changing fashion exhibitions are always beautiful and intriguing, and guaranteed to make me think even as I ooh and ahh. (Remember my post on their Eco-Fashion exhibition?)

Their current show is RetroSpective, running through November 16, 2013. It's a thoughtful look at how often fashion repeats itself, or perhaps more accurately, how often the same elements are re-imagined and reinvented. (The Life Magazine feature on 1930s hoopskirts that I recently mentioned is part of this exhibition.) See it if you can - FIT is only a few blocks from Penn Station, if you're in town for the day - but if you can't, here's the link to their on-line version of the show, featuring some of the highlight pieces.

According to the exhibition, one fashion element that keeps returning is the big, poufy sleeve. We've shared the big sleeves of the 1830s here and here on the blog before, but the look was hardly new then. From our Pinterest boards, here's an Italian Renaissance example from 1532, and another a hundred years later in 1635, worn by English Queen Henriette Marie.

The image, above, is from the FIT exhibition on-line, and the dresses are both from the FIT collection. Big sleeves like the ones on the green silk gown were first popular in the 1830s, contributing to an exaggerated, sloping shoulder-line. When big sleeves returned again in the 1890s with the name gigot, or leg-of-mutton sleeves, they were much more exuberant, as seen on the brown silk dress. But the style didn't end there. Two other examples in the exhibition are decidedly modern: an Yves Saint Laurent evening dress from 1980, and another by Caroline Herrera from 1981. Hmm...is it time for big sleeves to reappear again?

Above: Left: Two-piece dress, brown brocaded silk satin, jet, sequins, c. 1896, USA. Right: Afternoon dress, green silk satin, c. 1830, England. Both from Museum at FIT; photograph courtesy of Museum of FIT.

Sadler's Balloon Ascent in 1811

Mr. Sadler's Balloon Ascent

Loretta reports:

In Last Night’s Scandal, my hero and heroine visit a stone commemorating an early balloon ascent by the Tuscan Vincent Lunardi.  Balloon ascensions continued to be very popular entertainment in the 19th century, featuring frequently at Vauxhall Gardens, among other places.

During this week in 1811, England’s first balloonist, James Sadler, made one of his many ascents, this time in honor of the Prince Regent's birthday.  As the account at the Pennine Region Balloon Association makes clear, Sadler’s adventures could be extremely exciting.  (Please scroll down the page for the Gentleman’s Magazine description of what happened when he got caught in a gale on 7 October 1811.)

Text on print: "A view of the balloon of Mr. Sadler's ascending with him and Captain Paget of the Royal Navy from the gardens of the Mermaid Tavern at Hackney on Monday, August 12, 1811. The Balloon ascended at 3 o'clock in the afternoon and descended safe near Tilbury Fort in Essex at 20 minutes past."

Illustration courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the Library of Congress page for this print, where you can further enlarge it.

The End of the Road for an Old Coach, 1850

Isabella reporting,

I didn't want to include this print in today's James Pollard post because it wasn't by Pollard, and because it's so melancholy, even sentimental. But it really does belong near the Pollard paintings, so here it is as a bonus post.

We tend to think that we're the only disposable age, ready to toss out the old technology in favor of new at a moment's notice. But this 1850 print, Past and Present Through Victorian Eyes, shows how swiftly "progress" was already taking hold in the 19th c. as well. While less than twenty years have passed since James Pollard was painting the glories of travel by coach, the once-grand mail coach is now relegated to a make-shift hen-house, its wheels broken and its horses and passengers long departed. In the distance we can see an early Victorian steam engine puffing along with a tidy row of passenger cars in tow, representing the unstoppable future. Yet how many discarded railroad cars now sit in fields and junkyards, having faced the same fate as the old coach? Progress, indeed.

Above: Past and Present Through Victorian Eyes, printed by Leighton Brothers, 1850. Science Museum, London.

It's All in the Details: Early 19th c. Coaching Paintings by James Pollard

Isabella reporting:

It may sound like a contradiction for writers, but Loretta and I agree that one really, really good picture is indeed worth a thousand words. We recently came across a zoomable collection of paintings by James Pollard (1792-1867) and spent a lengthy long-distance call exclaiming in our best nerdy-history-style over all the amazing details to be found in his work - details that vividly show traveling and transportation in early 19th c. England.

Pollard isn't the kind of painter that's taught today in art history classes, nor is he featured in blockbuster museum shows. Instead of elegant brushwork or psychological insight, his work is based on skillful observation and attention to detail. As a child, Pollard's family lived on the main northern coaching route, and he became fascinated with the great coaches that rumbled past. Coaches were the Regency's equivalent of jet-set travel, setting records for speed and making country-wide travel possible. Pollard was trained not only in his father's print-making trade, but also studied painting, and his first commission in 1820 was for an innkeeper's signboard, showing the Exeter Royal Mail Coach in perfectly observed detail. The signboard was admired by the Austrian ambassador, who commissioned a copy on canvas, and Pollard's career as a coaching and sporting painter was launched. For the next twenty years, he prospered with numerous commissions, and he exhibited at the Royal Academy. However, the death of his wife and daughter in 1840 sent him into a deep depression that virtually ended his painting career, and when he died in 1867, he was sadly forgotten and penniless.

The detail in Pollard's paintings - and the prints made from them - is extraordinary. Not only are the coaches, carriages, and horses depicted down to every harness and spoke, but Pollard devoted equal care to what the people in his paintings are wearing, and their surroundings as well. I love how, in Hatchetts - the White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, above, all of the windows of Hatchetts Hotel are different: some are open, some have the shades drawn, or hanging crookedly, and one has a lady watching the crowded scene below. Trafalgar Square, below, shows the London of the 1830s that I picture when I read Loretta's books, with the ladies in their extravagant gowns and hats and gentlemen in well-fitted coats and tall hats, and everyone (including the dogs) dodging the traffic.

While you can click on the images here to enlarge, the Denver Art Museum's site has zoomable images for both these paintings here and here. I also hope you'll follow this link to the Pollard page on Wikipedia, where you can enlarge the high-resolution images much further than Blogger allows. If you wish to see more, this link to the BBC Your Paintings site will take you to a slideshow of thirty paintings by Pollard.

Above: Hatchetts - the White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, by James Pollard, c. 1830. Denver Art Museum.
Below: Trafalgar Square, by James Pollard, c. 1837-43, Denver Art Museum.