Fashion from the Great Gatsby’s roaring twenties

Left: Jeanne Lanvin | Ensemble, Evening; Summer 1923. Right: Jeanne Lanvin | Suit, Evening (Tuxedo); 1927. Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

“I noticed that she wore her evening dress, all her dresses, like sports clothes—there was a jauntiness about her movements as if she had first learned to walk upon a golf course on clean, crisp, mornings.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The recent movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby has turned the spotlight on the fashion and styles of the Roaring Twenties. So what made the twenties roar?

The economic boom was decisive. Soldiers came home from World War I to jobs in manufacturing plants ready to turn from war production to consumer goods; with the flourishing economy, many commodities became affordable for the first time. Another key engine for progress was the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which granted women the right to vote. It was signed into law in 1920, heralding unprecedented liberation. The twenties were also a pivotal time for mass communication: radio, cinema, and the automobile sped up the distribution of information—and trends.

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Celebrating National Bike Month

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec | La Chaine Simpson (bicycle chains), 1896 | Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.; artres.com

May is National Bike Month! Did you know that there are more than a billion bicycles worldwide? Perhaps more surprisingly, the basic configuration of a bicycle hasn’t changed much from the chain-driven model developed around 1885.

Amed T. Thibault | Bicycle, Livery, Carriage, and Paint Shop Trade Sign, 1895-1905 | American Folk Art Museum; folkartmuseum.org

The first pedal-propelled bicycle was reputedly invented by Kirkpatrick MacMillan in Scotland in 1839. While not everyone agrees on his breakthrough, it is widely accepted that MacMillan was the first person to be charged with a cycling traffic offense in 1842 after he was fined five shillings for knocking over a little girl.

In the early 1860s, bicycle design was improved in France by a crank drive with pedals and a larger front wheel that allowed the rider to travel farther with every rotation of the pedals. The model soon developed into the “penny-farthing,” which boasted wheels with solid rubber tires mounted on a tubular steel frame. While certainly formidable-looking, the high placement of the seat and the poor weight distribution made it difficult to ride.

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Butterfly sightings in the ARTstor Digital Library

Papilionidae; swallowtail butterfly | Collected: 8/1975, Madagascar, Africa | Yale University: Peabody Museum of Natural History; peabody.yale.edu

Spring time is here and butterflies are already making their annual appearance, according to butterfliesandmoths.org. To celebrate, we’ve compiled a slide show of selections from a wide variety of eras, regions, and fields of study, from science to art to costume design.

Search the ARTstor Digital Library for butterfl* to find more than 1,000 images with the keywords “butterfly” or “butterflies.”

Butterfly Collector | ca. 1850 | George Eastman House; eastmanhouse.org

Papilionidae; swallowtail butterfly | Papua New Guinea, Australia | Yale University: Peabody Museum of Natural History; peabody.yale.edu

Papilionidae; swallowtail butterfly | Collected: 9/1913, Assam State, India | Yale University: Peabody Museum of Natural History; peabody.yale.edu

Ypthima sesara; nymphalid butterfly | Collected: 12/19/1963, Vita Levu., Fiji Islands | Yale University: Peabody Museum of Natural History; peabody.yale.edu

Morpho Hecuba, nymphalid butterfly | Collected: 9/1952, Para State, Brazil | Yale University: Peabody Museum of Natural History; peabody.yale.edu

Jean Jacques Bachelier | White angora cat chasing a butterfly, 2nd half 18th Century | Musée Lambinet | Réunion des Musées Nationaux

Strobridge Lithograph | Forepaugh-Sells Enormous Shows United: The Ty-Bell Sisters, Aerial Butterflies, 1910 | The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art: Circus Collection; ringling.org/CircusMuseums

Alexander Bening | Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain: fol. 25 (recto) | c. 1495-1500 | The Cleveland Museum of Art

French Worth | Evening Dress, 1898 | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

German | Bonnet | second half 19th century | Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Click on any image to view the slide show and to read the full captions.

Our slide show includes an image of a very serious-looking butterfly collector from George Eastman House; several examples from the nearly 70 specimens of butterflies in Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History; an 18^th-century painting of a mischievous cat chasing a butterfly from Réunion des Musées Nationaux; a 1910 lithograph of the Ty-Bell Sisters, Aerial Butterflies from The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Circus Collection; a colorful illumination from the Book of Hours of Queen Isabella I, ca. 1495-1500, from The Cleveland Museum of Art Collection; and an evening dress and a bonnet from more than two dozen butterfly-themed dresses and accessories in The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Brooklyn Museum Costumes.

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New agreement: Images from the permanent collection of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

ARTstor and the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) are collaborating to share 250 images from the permanent collection of the Museum at FIT.

The Museum at FIT, which is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, is the only museum in New York City dedicated solely to the art of fashion. Best known for its innovative and award-winning exhibitions, which The New York Times has described as “ravishing,” the museum has a collection of more than 50,000 garments and accessories dating from the 18th century to the present. Like other fashion museums, such as the Musée de la Mode, the Mode Museum, and the Museo de la Moda, The Museum at FIT collects, conserves, documents, exhibits, and interprets fashion. The museum’s mission is to advance knowledge of fashion through exhibitions, publications, and public programs.

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On this day: Daylight Saving Time

Vincent van Gogh | Sower | 1888 | Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller | Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.; artres.com

It’s time to spring forward this weekend! Daylight Saving Time starts at 2AM Sunday morning, don’t forget to set your clock ahead one hour before you go to bed tonight. We made this slide show of beautiful clocks and watches to help you remember.

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New agreement: Images from the permanent collection of the Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens

ARTstor is collaborating with Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens to share approximately 1,100 images from its permanent collection in the Digital Library.

Marjorie Merriweather Post bought Hillwood in 1955 and renovated the property with the intention of leaving it as a museum that would inspire and educate the public. The Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens opened as a public institution in 1977, endowing the country with the most comprehensive collection of Russian imperial art outside of Russia, a distinguished 18th-century French decorative art collection, six working greenhouses boasting one of the country’s finest orchid collections, and twenty-five acres of serene landscaped gardens and natural woodlands for all to enjoy.

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Now available: Images from the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA)

Unknown (Japanese) | Seki station, No. 48, Tokaido Road series | Indianapolis Museum of Art; imamuseum.org |Image © Indianapolis Museum of Art

ARTstor and the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) have collaborated to share more than 2,000 images from its encyclopedic permanent collection in the Digital Library. This is the second installment of a projected total of 10,000 images.

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Now available: Images for Academic Publishing from The Walters Art Museum

Author: Zayn al-Din Isma’il ibn Hasan al-Jurjani | Compendium of Medicine | 22 Rabi’ II 889 AH/AD 1484 | The Walters Art Museum

The Walters Art Museum has made 1,576 of a projected 4,000 images of paintings, drawings, sculpture, and decorative arts available in the Images for Academic Publishing (IAP) program.

The IAP program is intended to offload the costs of museums delivering high-resolution image files to scholars for academic publications, and to foster scholarly publication in the history of art by providing these high-quality TIFF image files free-of-charge to both ARTstor subscribers and non-subscribers alike.

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Happy Hanukkah!

Jewish | Chanukkah lamp (menorah), with birds |end 18th cent. | Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.; artres.com

Happy Hanukkah! The eight-day festival that celebrates the triumph of light over darkness begins on the eve of the 25^th of the Jewish month of Kislev, which fell on December 8 this year. ARTstor offers many resources to mark the holiday.

Among the traditions surrounding the festival, possibly the most striking is the nightly lighting of the menorah. And indeed, a search for menorah leads to more than 100 magnificent images, such as photographs of the holy necropolis Beth She’arim in Israel from Sites and Photos, which includes a carved menorah from the Byzantine era, and dozens of images from Art, Archaeology and Architecture (Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives), ranging from a coin depicting a menorah from 1^st century BCE to dazzling menorahs from the 20^th century.

Two coins; left: coin of Antigonus last Hasmonean king of Israel, with menorah; right: coin of John Hyrcanus II, with inscription in wreath | 1st cent. BCE | Image and original data provided by Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archives/ART RESOURCE, N.Y.; artres.com

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In the news: Countdown for the “Mayan apocalypse”

Mesoamerican | Polychrome vase | Kerr Archive; mayavase.com

As you’ve probably heard, people across the world have been worrying that the world will end on December 21, 2012, influenced by some recent interpretations of Popol Vuh, a 16th-century narrative about the origins, traditions, and history of the Maya nation. Thankfully, NASA scientists recently debunked this and other apocalyptic predictions.

But don’t let the fact that the world is not about to end damper your interest in Mayan artifacts! The ARTstor Digital Library features more  than 500 fascinating photographs of Pre-Columbian artifacts from Justin Kerr and Barbara Kerr that shouldn’t be missed. The collection consists of still and rollout photographs of vases, plates, and bowls from the various cultures of Mesoamerica. The rollouts—which show the entire surface of an object in a single frame—were made by photographer Justin Kerr with a camera he designed and built. The objects in the collection depict a variety of everyday Mayan activities and religious concepts, and stem from archaeological sites, museums, and collections throughout Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, the United States, Canada, and Europe. View the collection here.

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