1890s AD

Magazine Antiques, July, 1998 by Alison C. Dineen

As printing technology advanced in the late nineteenth century, it became possible to produce large runs of full-color posters inexpensively. Innovations offered designers more creative control over the final product, and, coupled with an increased number of consumer goods available through industrial manufacturing, marked the birth of graphic design as a profession.(1)

Literary and other posters of the last decade of the nineteenth century appealed to the desires dan increasingly sophisticated American consumer. Much as today, advertising often played upon the demand for new products that offered implicit confirmation of the buyer's good taste. Posters gave expression to late nineteenth-century concepts about success, or what we might call the good life, in the clothing, retail goods, reading materials, and leisure activities they depicted. However, the enthusiasm for collecting posters in the 1890s went beyond any interest in a particular product and suggests a more formal appreciation of aesthetic qualities.(2) Some historians have, however, suggested that the popular appeal of posters was related to the mind-set of the ever-practical American audience - namely that the poster's commercial aspect suited the consumer ideology of an emerging industrial nation.(3)

After the Civil War, many urban, middle-class women found their domestic responsibilities eased. A seminal study of American women's history by Eleanor Flexner points to "gas lighting, municipal water systems, domestic plumbing, canning, the commercial production of ice, the improvement of furnaces, stoves, and washtubs, and the popularization of the sewing machine," as well as an increased number of unskilled immigrants who were available for domestic employment, as significant factors in relieving late nineteenth-century American women of some of their traditional domestic labors.(4) The establishment of advanced schools for women - including Mount Holyoke in 1837 followed by Vassar, Wellesley, Smith, Bryn Mawr, and Radcliffe as well as the acceptance of women in many state colleges and universities over the next five decades - offered exciting opportunities and some social sanction for the growing number of women who desired to engage their interests and talents beyond the domestic sphere. These changes also produced understandable tensions and some confusion about the roles of women in society, as is revealed in the literature and visual arts of the era.

The literal re-formation of clothing for women - which in the second half of the nineteenth century included a cumbersome framework of bustle and hoops under multiple layers of long, heavy, ground-sweeping skirts and tight corsets around the waist - was not really evident until the last decade of the century. In fact, the introduction of bloomers in mid-century by a few venturesome women met with almost universal derision. However, by the 1890s the bustle had disappeared and skirts became bell-shaped, flowing more naturally around the hips.(5)

Strong interest in the physical and mental health benefits gained through physical exercise played a pivotal role in the movement toward more practical clothing for women and men. Women's participation in sports had begun seriously by the 1880s, with women playing in ground-length skirts. Bicycles became increasingly popular and were linked with "woman's emancipation" as well as many new fashions, such as split skirts and a form of baggy knickerbockers.(6)

The 1896 poster Ride a Stearns and Be Content [ILLUSTRATION FOR PLATE II OMITTED] by the illustrator Edward Penfield offers an amusing portrait of a stylish young woman riding confidently in a short dark skirt. Closer examination reveals that her feet are actually raised forward above the pedals and stretched over the front wheels. Her prim, determined facial expression reveals nothing. The title of the poster typifies how advertising can play on undercurrents in social relations. One wonders if "Be Content" is a comment on the holistic benefits of physical exertion or a more pointed reference to the independence and mobility that cycling offered many otherwise presumably discontented women.

Another poster of 1896, Victor Bicycles (cover and PL III), designed by Will H. Bradley offers a second perspective. An accomplished writer, designer, printer, furniture designer, and largely self-taught artist, Bradley was strongly influenced by the art nouveau style and is credited with introducing its characteristic whiplash curves to the American public through his popular posters for trade magazines and literary periodicals beginning in 1894.(7) Bradley's male figure in this poster gazes appreciatively at the "new woman" cyclist. The stylized poppies would seem to be part of a symbolic visual vocabulary for desire or amorous intent. It would have been in the advertisers interest to depict women in a positive manner, as they were important purchasers of bicycles.

Both the Steams and Victor bicycle posters offer details of informal fashions of the mid-1890s, such as the exaggerated balloon sleeves for blouses and the small hats "perched squarely on the top of the head."(8) It is not unreasonable to assume that the two very proper young ladies pictured were corsets under their casual attire.