A History of Side Saddle Equitiation
This brief history is a tribute to elegance, to the women who learnt to aspire to its greatest heights, and to the men who lived in the thin air at its summit.
Art is an illusion; it is our response to creation. Art is the manifestation of mankind’s desire to leave his own mark in the world and by sharing in the spirit of creativity, he achieves in his eyes, immortality. The creative process contains all the elements of an educated response to emotions stimulated by environmental demands. Man’s intellect is elevated by the act of creation and by the stimulation of his higher self and so by doing bringing him closer to God.
Through education the artist is able to learn and develop his own visual language and to transmit that language to others through the skillful application of the artist’s hand. When education fails, so does art. Even man’s first impressions of his world drawn onto the walls of caves were a statement of awe and magic. They captured the essence of an animal or person and to do that there had to be a bonding, a moment of recognition, a moment of truth.
The Fine Art of Elegance is a celebration of equestrienne portraiture, from the medieval period to the present day. There is not an abundance of such portraits; they are not primarily court paintings, nor are they portraits of women or specifically portraits of horses. They do not fall into any particular genre, but nearly always contain a covert or overt narrative. When the subject is painted, it provides the artist with a unique opportunity to indulge his talents, his aspirations and his affections. There is undeniable romance in the depiction of beautiful women elegantly dressed in luxurious silks and satins, contrasting with the powerful form, presence and athleticism of the horse. Together they are a stunning combination of fragility and strength, symbolism and realism, romance and history. There can be no doubt that the act of riding side-saddle is an elegant pastime.
An elegant painting, artist unknown, but on the left is a large country house. Shis could be on the Mendips, or even Exmoor.
What do we mean by elegance? Elegance is, as the English dictionary tells us, a word that implies refined luxury; elegant people are graceful and dress well, they have taste, and they would be expected to embody a degree of excellence. Some people are naturally elegant, but achieving elegance can be expensive, and certainly the pastime of riding side-saddle requires a deep purse. We all know how costly a wedding dress can be, but on that day when a woman glides up the aisle she may recall that her movements were somehow altered. She felt different, restricted perhaps by a gown and veil. Her bearing would have been more upright and stately, she would have been aware of how elegant she felt. A woman riding side-saddle on a beautiful horse would feel very much the same.
Elegant women who graced the stage of public life in this way quickly become icons. Elegance, charm, beauty, wit and energy, all combine to create charisma. We are drawn to people who emanate charisma and therefore charm, they are delightful to be near their self-esteems radiates and connects. The women in our side-saddle portraits were all charismatic. Many of them won fame, fortune and husbands through their courage and grace and were immortalised by painters.
Horse riding is an ancient partnership; its origins are not fully documented or understood. Dressage is the schooling of a horse and rider so as to achieve total harmony. Dressage flowered in the Baroque period, for in that period more than in any other there was a real sense of attaining paradise on earth, through music, paintings, architecture, dress, manners and of course the horse. Man’s ability to take raw nature and redesign it to create his own universe was never again to achieve such perfection. The horse’s natural ability to run, jump, spin and dance is honed to a nearly perfect art through application, knowledge and training which, much like the ballerinas of today who practice incessantly, becomes a movement that borders on illusion. Flight, speed and lightness are elevated to an art form. It was in the Baroque period that such arts flourished to a level of perfection. Women become art. They are their own creations. The massive wigs and wide court dresses with shimmering silver and gold thread set to dazzle the eye was an achievement of the Baroque period. Oblivious to the poverty that surrounded them, the wealthy became works of art trapped – sown into the world of their own making. Whether in court life in their castles and chateaux, women worked to constantly refine their lifestyles. They created formal gardens with geometric box hedges and pruned trees to resemble walls, fountains and birds. They forced structure into random nature, they taught their horses to fly and dance, they saw the world as anthropocentric, designed for their use. Yet women were seldom recognized for their contribution.
In medieval times women rode both aside, and astride. The side-saddle was yet to emerge as a separate style and method. Charlemagne’s six glamorous daughters rode astride when they hunted with their father. There is every reason to believe that women were encouraged to ride sitting aside on ceremonial occasions in order to be shown off by their fathers or husbands. They were compliant in recognising that there was nothing wrong with playing to the crowd. They must have been happy to create an image that pleased men but which also showed that they were quite definitely women. If riding aside had other connotations, that for instance, a woman should not get sexual pleasure from riding a horse, then this too was an important element in their choice of seat.
A woman riding aside or on a conventional side-saddle is immediately recognisable as a woman. That in itself is important in narrative painting. Certainly as far back as medieval times, wealthy men and women were dressed like peacocks with lavishly embroidered clothes. Women were identifiable by their long skirts and intricate head wear. If women dressed like men they could be confused with men and in some cases, deliberately disguised themselves to create such confusion.
The medieval world was dominated by religious fervour; it was the age in which Christianity became a world power. Religion did not trickle into people’s lives, it flooded across the whole spectrum of society. Religious fervor inspired the building of great cathedrals and the illustrating of religious manuscripts. Crusades were fired by the belief that Jerusalem should be rescued from the infidels. Men, women and children were sent to their deaths by a society which was convinced that sacrifice to a Christian god was glorious and the ultimate pathway to heaven. The medieval world was a deeply cruel one in which women had very few rights. They were chattels to be used and abused and when no longer required, discarded. So in the Medieval world a woman’s place in society was generally subservient to men, they were hidden out of sight and untutored. Only those born high up the social scale were in a position to attempt a little independence. Mostly, women were depicted as the bearers of children, the slaves of men and embellishments at a royal court.
Christine de Pizan (1363-1431) was an exception to that rule. She was born in Venice and was educated by her father, an Italian, who was the court astrologer to Charles V of France. She married Etienne Castel, who became the king’s secretary, but she was widowed at twenty-five and had to find a way to support her children, and so she became a writer. Christine achieved eminence through her work, which was remarkable considering the restrictions of the age and in one of her books, ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’, she put forward her view of female servitude. She eloquently supports a plea for equal status with men, arguing against Aristotelian philosophy. Christine de Pizan was in a privileged position, and so was not persecuted for her views. Hypatia, many centuries earlier, had been less fortunate. She was the daughter of a mathematician and was born in Alexandria in AD 370. She became a platonic scientist and, tutored by her father, she eventually held an eminent position in the city. By the beginning of the year 400 the pagan Roman Empire was torn apart by its conversion to Christianity. Christian fanatics were immersed in blood-letting and persecution, and considered followers of Plato to be certain heretics. Hypatia’s forthright beliefs and refusal to be converted to Christianity led to her appalling and sadistic murder in AD 415, when she was dragged from her chariot and tortured to death in a church called Cesarium. In those days it was dangerous for a woman to think intelligently, never mind publish her opinions.
In medieval times men allowed women to ride pillion behind their husbands, and there are many illustrations showing them doing just that. The horse gave a man freedom. Men needed freedom, women quite definitely did not! Transport was limited in the Dark and Middle Ages to four or two legs, or very basic carts and chariots. Women would have to walk or ride behind their husbands. They like household chattels, would be carried.
The earliest side-saddles provided nothing more than a seat placed sideways on the back of the horse, sometimes with a small plank of wood as a footrest. It could be attached to the back of the man’s saddle for the pillion rider. This form of early side-saddle had a raised back and sides like a chair, and would have been made of a padded velvet or leather on a wooden frame. Peasant women would have sat sideways on a much more basic structure just a wooden tree, with perhaps a sheepskin cover. Women sometimes held the reins, but were more often led.
Anne of Bohemia, the wife of Richard II (1367-1400), introduced the side-saddle seat into England in about 1382. It may well have been that riding side-saddle was quite common in Bohemia and that she popularised the style in her new found home. Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) says of the Wife of Bath in his Canterbury Tales, ‘Up-on an amblere easily she sat,’. She, like Joan of Arc, rode astride, and was definitely in charge of her own horse.
An elegant painting by Goupie, the conversations are so diverse, the horse and the dogs and the horsewomans intent of watching the ship arrving. It has indescrible charm. 1860’s?
The Renaissance emerged as a reaction to the restrictive religious cycle of Medievalism. It began in Italy towards the end of the fourteenth century, its influence gradually spreading northwards and westwards. Among the instigators of the Renaissance were Bramante, Leonardo da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Donatello and Ghiberti, they were termed humanists and looked to Plato, the Greek philosopher, for inspiration. The very philosophy that Hypatia had been sacrificed for was gradually creeping back into fashion. The art of the period was dominated by a desire to grapple with scale, perspective and the natural world, through the application of mathematics. Leonardo da Vinci spent his whole life examining the minutiae of the natural world, through every discipline he could find. He profoundly changed forever the acceptable content and design of pictures. He used the studies he made from the natural world to dramatise his subjects. Leonardo’s legacy to the modern world is immeasurable. At its base is the application of observation. He was a master because he questioned everything.
The architecture of the Renaissance is sub-divided into Renaissance proper, Mannerism, Baroque, Neo-Classicism and Greek revival. The Renaissance itself loosely flowed into being from roughly the time of Giotto (1276-1337) and Dante (1265-1321) the great poet; it was then metered into full swing by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and continued in many forms until well into the eighteenth century.
This new interest in the classical world of Greece and Rome had a lengthy gestation period. The classical world had been re-awakened. The columns of Greece and Rome, unlike the pillars of the Gothic era, were capped with heavy capitals their upward thrust halted. Soaring organic towers and pillars of the Gothic buildings were metaphorically blunted, bringing to an end, for a while, the world of fanatical Christian medievalism.
The writers and artists of the Renaissance summoned the gods and philosophers of the classical world to return. Society was joyous at the rediscovery of ancient mythology and of the sciences. Botticelli’s painting of the ‘Birth of Venus’ is a perfect example of this desire to court the classical world. By the beginning of the sixteenth century the Renaissance had arrived in France, and would gradually begin to influence first court, and then secular life; but it was not until the reign of Elizabeth I that its influence would reach England.
Francis I (1515-1547) built the Chateau of Fontainebleau in the fashion of the new Renaissance. As Francis insisted on the true Italian style, he imported craftsmen from Italy to stucco the walls and ceilings. In the great hall, a masterpiece of its period, the window arches are half circles, the horizonal line repeated again and again within the stucco decoration and the paneling. The ceiling is elaborately decorated with detailed carved inset hexagonal section, a tribute to mathematical rationalism. Gone is the flamboyant Gothic arch above the fireplace. It has been replaced by a lintel, and dominated by horizontal decoration.
Catherine de Medici (1519-1589) was the wife of Francis I, King of France. She had a great fondness for the chase but preferred to ride side-saddle. While out hunting she discovered that she had a better grip if she put one leg over the raised pommel or horn. A French courtier describes Catherine de Medici on horseback: “She held herself very gracefully, having been the first who put her leg in the arch of the saddle, so that it looked more graceful and pleasing than the foot board. The desire to show her leg was one reason for the invention, because she had very nice ones, her calves being well formed, and she took great pleasure in well-booting herself, and in seeing her stocking well put on and not wrinkled.” (Page 57, Cecil G. Trew, From Dawn to Eclipse.
Subsequently she had a saddle made with a hook or crutch on the nearside and a second crutch on the offside of the saddle, offering a little more stability, so that the right leg sat between the two. This offside crutch replaced the support that formed the side of the seat in the early side-saddles. This new style of side-saddle remained unaltered for nearly two hundred years, until the addition of the leaping head. The fashion to ride facing forwards, gave women better control of their mounts, whilst remaining within the confines of propriety.
The Chateau of Fontainebleau was dedicated to the cult of Diana, the goddess of hunting. She was an ancient Italic goddess, and the crescent moon was her symbol. By coincidence, Francis I and his son Henry II shared the same mistress. She was Diane de Poitiers. An extraordinarily beautiful and intelligent woman, she was thirty when Francis I died, but such was her influence at court that Henry fell under her spell, and she became his mistress. Stuccoed onto all the walls of the great hall at Fontainebleau are two crescent moons, back to back. Francis said they were two C’s back to back as a tribute to his wife, Catherine de Medici; but wise courtiers knew that the crescent moon, the emblem of Diana the goddess of hunting, was a subtle tribute to his adored mistress.
Images are created by people as a statement of their desires, philosophy, wealth, affection, and as an essential decoration or embellishment to their homes. Paintings and other works of art are also a personal record of events and people but are often a fabrication of reality. All images, both sculptures and paintings, reflect the fashion of the day, and as such provide the viewer with a key to the patterns of change. A portrait of an important person will show them in a in a pose which implies that the sitter aspires to certain ideals or aspirations; they have in today’s terms, a hidden agenda. It is therefore important when assessing a painting to consider whether or not we are looking at a posed or a natural scene.
Paintings were used to communicate ideas, commemorate events, tell stories and venerate. They were often loaded with covert and overt symbolism. Symbolic paintings could only be understood by people initiated into this silent language of metaphor and allegory. That was their appeal. With this knowledge one could enter into a private world and converse with other initiates and be party to the deeper meaning. As we are far removed in time from the events that gave rise to these images, we have to learn this language before we can understand the new and deeper world beyond.
All equestrian portraits of women make one important statement, which is, that women have a different status in society to men, and this position that they held altered throughout the ages. Women who hunted, riding both astride and side-saddle, were not only advertising their beauty and courage, but also their availability in the marriage market. We should not forget that until quite recently, ‘to be born a woman has been to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men.’ (p 46, WAYS OF SEEING by John Berger) Thus when women rode elegant thoroughbreds they were seen to be controlling a powerful creature by means of communication and love, this to any man was a fire, a light to which like moths they were drawn, some to their deaths. It was for women a way of saying, “I can.”
By the late seventeenth century most women rode side-saddle. Queen Christina of Sweden (1626-89) was, however not to be classed among most women. She had her portrait painted riding both astride and aside, she and later Marie Antoinette, were happy to adopt either seat. This remarkable daughter of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden was, though not excessively beautiful, very clever. She had been educated as only men were in those days which equipped her well for kingship and she ruled with great energy and excellence for a few years. Then, tiring of the restrictions of court life, she abdicated. One of her excuses for departing from her country was that she wanted to become a Catholic, and so, with conversion in mind, she finally moved to Rome. There it was that she gathered together great writers and artists of the day, and under her influence the pastoral movement and the romantic revival of Arcadia was born. Arcadia had its origins in reality; it was based on a country in the centre of the Peloponnesus near Laconia and Messinia. She drew her inspiration from the poets Ovid and Virgil, who established it as a visionary realm, one that embodied pastoral innocence. It was after Christina’s death that her friends gathered together and formed the Academia Dell’Arcadia, ‘to exterminate bad taste and to see to it that it shall not rise again…’. The real influence of Arcadian principles was slow to filter through into Britain. But, when it finally arrived, its influence was profound and lasting. Women’s dress at this time became more natural. The tight lacing and the cumbrous farthingale was a thing of the past and styles simplified to meet the challenge of the puritan element in society.
Still under the general term of the Renaissance, the Baroque period follows on from the Mannerist period. In Italy, it dates from about 1600-1680, with the period known as ‘High Baroque’ dating from 1630. New styles and fashion took time to travel and filter into society; so all dates must be treated as approximate. This complex fashion became a way of life. Music, conversation, the arts and architecture were all profoundly influenced. Conversation was conducted within careful rhetorical rules; it was a language designed to impress or persuade. Music, too, followed patterns, obeyed rules and was liberally ornamented. There was a basic beat which was then decorated with trills and deviations, mostly at the discretion of the musicians; it was designed like rhetorical conversation to amuse and persuade, its trills echoed and then repeated again in a slightly altered form. One piece of clothing, the waistcoat, is left over from the Baroque period, the front which is visible, is elaborate, whilst the back which is hidden is just a piece of plain cloth. It nicely sums up society at that time.
This is Skate and Caroline is wearing a copy of a dress made in 1825. The wool came from the Tudor Tailors in Nottingham and is of superb quality.
Costume was at all times a reflection of wealth. Styles of dress were slow to change. When courtiers travelled to other courts in Europe they would fall under new influences and dress codes. In medieval times only the wealthy could afford silks and satins, the peasants wore crudely woven wool and linen garments, felts and animal skins. Dress determined station in court and was therefore literally coded. Whenever a dye or an item was a rarity then it was considered desirable and the dress code changed to include it at some prominent position on the garment. Lace was hugely expensive at all times and items such as ruffs were extremely difficult to make. The cost of the ruff indicated wealth and position and the painting immortalised forever the families’ status. The wide skirts of the seventeenth and eighteenth century – as in ‘Las Meninas’ by Velasquez of the Infanta Margarita Teresa with her maids – were the height of decadence. Such dresses could only be worn in houses large doors and therefore influenced the architecture of the period. Gainsborough’s painting of, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Andrews’, shows us that style of dress was still in fashion a hundred years later in England.
In England Charles II was busy creating his own version of the ‘High Baroque.’ It was a fertile period of English art and culture, music and theatre. Charles invited the great artist Rubens to come to London. Hollar (1607-77), the engraver, influenced generations of artists and engravers. Handel and Purcell wrote their powerful and unforgettable refrains, and of course the architect, Sir Christopher Wren, rebuilt London after the great fire (1665). They were all influenced by the new Baroque style. The ceiling of Whitehall Palace remains one of the great masterpieces of the period. On the social front the gulf between the rich and the poor was ever widening; huge pockets of extreme poverty encircled the ever more opulent, wealthy and isolated aristocracy, whose life style is reflected in these paintings.
The Stuart influence on the arts and architecture continued throughout Queen Anne’s reign and into the Georgian period. By the middle of the Eighteenth century Andrea Palladio’s inspirational designs had become the rage. Andrea Palladio (1508-80) the architect, worked during the period in Italy known as Mannerist, and yet his work is quite different from the highly decorated, complex facades of the period. He was born in Vicenza in Italy, and is famous for his designs of Neo-Classical buildings such as the Villa Rotunda and the Theatre Olympico, establishing the style of the square building with the classical portico. Cool, serene and refined it became the embodiment of the principles of Arcadia. The English gentry fell in love.
It was because of this rediscovery of the sublime, of symmetry and elegance, that a new pilgrimage began. The wealthy gentry longed to see for themselves the source of this ancient culture, to experience first hand the true spirit of the Renaissance, as inspired by the Greeks and Romans, to see for themselves the buildings of Palladio, the villa Rotunda and the Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza, to find ‘Arcadia’.
Pilgrimage, which has been an intrinsic part of the medieval world, was reborn. Pilgrimage is and always will be a way for settled people to experience nomadism. The early Christians took part in pilgrimages to the Holy land is search of the inspiration of their faith. Nomadism is cyclical the nomads traveling keeps him in touch with the earth and so is the cycle of Christian celebrations bound into paganism and the celebration of the natural cycles of life. As more and more people were forced to settle in towns, so their need for pilgrimages grew. So it was that the pilgrimage to Rome began. The English gentleman awakened to the glory of Greece and Rom, set off to savor the past. Thomas Gray, Horace Walpole, William Beckford and many others set forth to find this new dream, that of Arcadia, a perfection of the Gods, a world of pastoral idyll, a world of sacrifice and love the world that would help them create fine homes, noble and imposing. The painters Poussin and Claude de Lorraine provided the visual evidence that Arcadia existed and was accessible. Their influence continued for a century or more through Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, Girtin and Cotman.
Money from the colonies, and from the slave trade would soon be flowing into Britain. This, along with the industrial revolution was to provide us with the blood that created the English Race horse. New homes were created in the new styles of the Renaissance, the Neo-Classic and Baroque gave us a magnificent flowering of stately homes.
The picturesque style emerged slowly out of the Neo-Classic period. The shift was gentle, slight, but profound. It was as if all the styles since the medieval period were thrown into a vast cauldron and gently stirred. The resulting fashion included classical and gothic ruins in the backgrounds of paintings. Grottos and natural landscapes following in the style of the great master Leonardo da Vinci became the rage. ‘Natural’ parkland was landscaped to perfection by Capability Brown. Mature trees were transplanted, lakes dug out, Arcadian vistas appeared to delight the eye. Art saw Arcadia first; in the mind’s eye it evolved as a dream of perfection. The creation of Opera’s and the design of the classic county house followed. The Chelsea Shepherdess was born. This was a world for the rich. The poor remained in their hovels. The industrial revolution was gradually deforesting England and towns were growing. The painters and poets and composers continued to create this world of the sublime. They turned now to England and the Lake District was discovered. Wordsworth, Girtin, Turner, Cotman Francis Towne and Thomas Rowlandson, Samuel Palmer left us their impressions of this new perfection. They took the influence of Rome and rewrote it. Wright of Derby was a painter who saw an opportunity to show the industrial revolution as a drama. His use of fire to create shadow and light suggests links to Caravaggio, I see his paintings of industry and work display enthusiasm his paintings of portraits are almost mundane quiet and conventional by comparison. The Coltman’s portrait has life and fun and lightness in it, it charms.
By the mid 1770’s fashion had gone to extremes. To go to the Opera in an evening dress less than four foot wide would have been foolish. This was a dress designed for grand entrances and grand houses. And so it was that when you rode to hounds your garments trailed petticoats flowing deliciously beside your horse, presumably trained not to mind. Complex garments caused problems as with Amelia the daughter of George II (1772-1760) who falling from her horse our hunting was dragged several hundred yards as it snagged on the pommel of her saddle. A brave young lady she refused to be dissuaded from stag hunting which she continued to enjoy for many years.
Before the invention of the leaping head on the side saddle women had to hold onto the saddle or have a wonderful seat. Happily there were not many fences and the few natural obstacles were streams and ditches. After the enclosure act 1750 followers of hounds were now required to posts and rails so familiar to us today. It was precisely this need to jump that led to the invention of the Leaping head. It was around the late eighteenth or century early nineteenth century that a third crutch was placed to sit above the leg and therefore give the rider stability. The invention was attributed to Thomas Oldaker, huntsman to the Earl of Berkley. Oldaker was confined to riding side-saddle following a nasty fall that broke his leg. It is also attributed to another two gentleman Jules Charles Pellier and Francois Baucher, around the 1830 both being famous riding masters. You can take your pick. I find it quite interesting that as only women rode side-saddle yet it was men who invented the leaping head. Maybe women were better riders? The side-saddle at this time had a scooped seat and the flat seat appeared in the 1880’s. This encouraged a more elegantly upon the horse.
Note (page 109, To Whom the Goddess, by Lady Diana Sheddon and Lady Apsley 1932) ‘The old-fashioned side-saddle, with its knee grip, forced the rider’s weight back, but the modern grip with the thighs puts the weight some six inches further forward. At full gallop one can slide forward a trifle more, even at times slightly standing in the stirrup.’
One of this new breed of wild women who rode to hounds and swore as good as any man was Latitia Lady Lade. She brightened up the social horizon and broke through convention.
Thanks to Napolean, 1800-18 the Empire style, influence by the fashions of ancient Greece and Egypt dramatically altered they mode of haute couture. Dresses hung from the high under the bosom, flowing in light silks and cottons the petticoats and panniers of 30 years earlier gone consigned to the broom cupboard. In England Victoria came to the throne and so we fell into a long reign where ideas were to some extend stifled by her unchanging influence. Although she ruled a long time without her regent Albert, she was not another Elizabeth I. She did not have that independence of spirit.
Hunting and shooting was the pastime of the rich throughout the Victorian period. Horse racing was one of the few pastimes where rich and poor, lords and beggars, thieves and prostitutes mingled on the turf. It was as popular as football is today. Great horses and jockey’s became national icons. In the 1850’s Melton Mowbray hosted the hunting fraternity the wealthy rose late hunted all day and literally painted the town red. This saying originated from the ‘Mad” Marquess of Waterford who quite literally obtained paint and brushes and really did put red paint everywhere. A forerunner of Banksy, perhaps. John Mytton, rode a bear into a dining room, this was just one of his many pranks. Life is really rather dull today.
Ladies costumes were highly unsuitable for hunting and even for ordinary hacking. Horses had to be trained to be familiar with flowing gowns and trailing petticoats. The jaunty hat held in place by a dangerously long hatpin was never designed to protect the cranium. Health and Safety had not been invented. Riding clothes were designed to embellish the feminine contours and advertise the deep purse of the owner. Some of the most enchanting portraits are of stunning beautiful women on thoroughly well bred horses gazing demurely into the distance. In some instances both horse and rider. One is not at all sure that the fox was the prize of this hunt.
Some women decided to take men on at their own game, although it was unusual for women to ride to hounds, learning to keep up with the best of the men, despite the precarity of the side-saddle. For those who survived the rigors of the chase there were rewards. Elizabeth Russell, the daughter of a market gardener, became the Marchioness of Cleveland by her marriage to the Duke in 1813. Lady Augusta Milbanke was so accomplished a rider that she chose the new breed of English racer as her mount. She and Arabella Vane rode out with the Raby Pack, and both were admired for their equestrian excellence. Eleanor Sutor, brave enough to hunt side-saddle, found romance and a title in the hunting field eventually to become Lady Rivers.
Catherine Walters, who died in 1920 aged 81, was a great beauty who took to the hunting field to find her fortune. She was known as Skittles. She had many a brush with Lady Stamford, who may well have been somewhat jealous of this dashingly elegant woman who could ride just about anything. Lady Stamford’s complaints at being upstaged were ‘water off a ducks’ back‘ to Skittles who knew well enough that Lady Stamford like Lady Lade, had climbed the social ladder from humble beginnings. Perhaps a little paranoia goes a long way in the hunting field.
For women to ride astride and perhaps gain some physical pleasure from the motion of a horse was unacceptable, even shocking. Women did not ride astride. It was during Victoria’s reign that Hyde Park became the place to be seen. There was an explosion of riding schools in London. Skittles rode in Paris and London selling horses by showing her equestrian and feminine skills. To the end of her life she had many dedicated admirers.
Daisy Brooke, known as ‘Babblebrook’ was a shining example of an accomplished Victorian huntress. She married Lord Brooke, later to become the Earl of Warwick. Her enthusiasm for hunting caused her one day to slip out of Windsor Castle early hoping her departure would not be noticed, as she had not been given permission by the Queen to hunt; Queen Victoria did, however, spot her disappearing, and was heard to mutter, ‘How fast…how very fast!’
The Victorian period created a curious mixture of sentimentality, ignorance, profound learning and an incredible resistance to change in an ever more swiftly changing world. The Pre-Raphaelites epitomized this aspect of tradition, with deeply sentimental yet provocative works, signifying an awareness of the plight of ordinary people, and yet romancing for the past.
They drew their inspiration from the literature of Chaucer, Spencer, Shakespeare, Mallory and of poets like Tennyson and Wordsworth. The Pre-Raphaelites continued to press for English literature to be included under the study of ‘History Painting’ which the Royal Academy had restricted to the classical mythology and history of Greece and Rome. The Pre-Raphaelite style of painting concentrated on detail, with an almost a mania for photographic precision. In many ways this reflects the small-mindedness of the Victorians, who although professing to be steeped in morality, were responsible for the quadrupling of the population of England. The fashion for large families encouraged by the Queen remained in vogue until well after the First World War. Male dominance was observed and recorded by many a painter of the day, women took the passive role, but also at this time women began to rise up, the Suffragettes began the long haul to equality.
Into this restrictive and male-dominated society there was born on 24th December 1837, Elizabeth, daughter of Duke Max of Bavaria. Her father was loved by everyone with the exception of his wife. He ran a rather relaxed court, which may be the reason why Elizabeth did not flourish under the strict regime of the Austrian court. She has a great love of horses and was said to have perfected the art of horsemanship by the age of twelve. Here father also preferred horses to politics, so her encouraged Elizabeth in her preferred pastime of riding. Her elder sister Helene was thought to be a suitable bride for the Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria and was to presented at court. Duke Max decided to send Elizabeth as well to keep her company. Both girls were attractive but Elizabeth had by this time grown into the most superb auburn-haired beauty with peach blossom skin. She must have dazzled the Emperor. He fell in love with her and at sixteen she became the Empress of Austria. They were an ill-matched pair, Franz Joseph was a workaholic and a stickler for protocol and Elizabeth had no interest in the confines of court and had not been raised with a strong work ethic. She became ill and sought refuge with her horses. Franz Joseph could refuse her nothing. She came to England and rode to hounds. Her lack of consideration to Queen Victoria whom she ignored did not bode well, as she focused on her love of riding to hounds. It could be said she did very little for the House of Austria’s standing in diplomatic circles. The tragic circumstances of the suicide of their son Rudolph at Mayerling, was just another nail in the coffin, in which the Habsburgs were finally buried.
In England she met Bay Middleton and between them they gave the hunting world something to talk about for many years to come. They hunted in Ireland, for the entire world to watch an enviable camaraderie. Elizabeth eventually had to go home, and spent many years with only her memories of the days of the chase to keep her company. She was assassinated on the 10th September 1898 in Geneva by a young anarchist, Luchini. Poor Franz Joseph was grief stricken. “No one will ever know how much I loved her.” He said when he heard the news.
These Victorian portraits of women riding side-saddle are perhaps the most provocative. Alfred De Dreux, Sir Francis Grant, Munnings and Gilbert Holiday are among those painters who understood the mystery and power of fragility, they saw the sexual provocation in the demure and the elegant, they felt its hold on them, they succumbed to leave us a visual record of the final flowering of female sublimation. Theirs is the final statement on a world that was to change forever.
By the end of the nineteenth century influences from France, Spain and Germany were to change forever the way paint was put onto canvas. Impressionism was followed by Cubism, Pointillism, Futurism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Constructivism and so on, until art disappeared under a barrage of panic caused by a realization that it had lost its prominent place in the visual world. Art was being surpassed by photography, television, newspapers and mass advertising, its importance was waning. Artists continued to struggle to maintain a place in the world, until one man in a desperate attempt, perhaps, to gain recognition, placed a dead sheep in a tank of formaldehyde. He metaphorically murdered art. Hopefully this act of conceptual vandalism has cleared the way for a reclassification of the artist’s role in our society.
Modern art or as I prefer to daub it Nileism, is perhaps the reflection of a dysfunctional society. It is the art of a society uneducated in the classics, it is an art form freed from the confines of taste and the restrictions of a classical training. It has become the ramblings of the ordinary man. Munch’s “Scream” is a cry for help, for understanding and for a new order. Art still leads us, it is still ‘en avant’ of other forms of expression. It is us who have changed. The beautiful women no long ride to hounds with veiled faces and delicate kidskin gloves, their fine bodies tightly drawn into bodiced costumes, their mounts highly strung like their souls.
The post Victorian period left us with many great painters who had a passion and understanding for horse and rider. Lucy Kemp-Welsh, Gilbert Holiday and of course Sir Alfred Munnings, are among those we have chosen to include in this tribute to elegance. Sir Alfred Munnings autobiography in three volumes is a stirring and beautifully scripted account of his life. His knowledge and love of horses was the thread along which his life travelled, a tapestry painted by him, inspired his respect and love of the animals he had shared so much of his life with. So it is not surprising then that it is to Sir Alfred Munnings that I turn to for a last word on the art of riding side-saddle before the fashion died out. ‘I wish I had painted more women riding side-saddle before the fashion died out. A good figure in a well-cut habit is the essence of grace and symmetry.” (page 27, The Finish.)
© 2010 Caroline Anns-Baldock
Bibliography:
The Art of Side-Saddle, History, Etiquitte, showing, Rosamund Owen.
Cavalierea Amazones, Isabelle Veauvy, Adelaide de Savray, Isabelle de Ponton d’Amecourt
Riding for Pupils, Edwin J. Ellis
Death by Fame, Andrew Sinclair
The Sporting Empress, John Welcome
Ladies of the Chase, Meriel Buxton
The Fast Set, The World of Edwardian Racing, George Plumtree
School for Horse and Rider, Capt., J. E. Hance