Race, Gender, and Identity in American Equine Art: 1832 to the Present 9781138490888, 9781032258164, 9781351034340

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: But the Horse Is Much, Much More
Let Us not Praise Famous Horses
A Cow Is not a Cow Anywhere
Notes
Bibliography
1. Interspecies Entanglements in Edward Troye's Racehorse Portraits
Troye and English Models
The Multispecies Plantation Landscape
Thorough-breds
Against Kinship
Troye's Last Multi-figure Painting: The Undefeated Asteroid
Coda
Notes
Bibliography
2. Bone, Speed, and Blood: Schreiber & Sons and the Photographic Equine Portrait
Philadelphia, the Schreibers, and Thomas Eakins
Antecedents: From the Kentucky Stock Book and Race Horses of America to Portraits of Noted Horses of America
The Appeal of Trotters
Woodburn, Wallace, and Thoroughbreds
A Comparative Framework
Notes
Bibliography
3. A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well: The Rodeo Cowgirl in Early Twentieth-Century Real Photo Postcards
Cow(horse)girl
Rodeo Cowgirls in (Arrested) Motion
Woman/Horse/Together
The Rodeo Cowgirl in the Art of the West: Beyond the RPPC
Notes
Bibliography
4. Richard McLean's Equine Acts
McLean Chooses the Horse
Horses Acting as Painting
The Horse Show and its Audiences
Still (Live) Animals
Highbrow or Middlebrow?: Eliding Race and Class
(White) Women and Horses: Trophy Girls, Pageant Contestants, and Show Competitors
Women and Horses on the Periphery
Notes
Bibliography
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Race, Gender, and Identity in American Equine Art

This book traces an evolution of equine and equestrian art in the United States over the last two centuries to counter conventional understandings of subjects that are deeply enmeshed in the traditions of elite English and European culture. In focusing on the construction of identity in painting and photography—of Blacks, women, and the animals themselves involved in horseracing, rodeo, and horse show competition—it illuminates the strategic and varying roles visual artists have played in producing cultural understandings of human–animal relationships. As the first book to offer a history of American equine and equestrian imagery, it shrinks the chasm of literature on the subject and illustrates the significance of the genre to the history of American art. This book further connects American equine and equestrian art to historical, theoretical, and philosophical analyses of animals and attests to how the horse endures as a vital, meaningful subject within the art world as well as culture at large. This book will be of interest to scholars in art history, American art, gender studies, race and ethnic studies, and animal studies. Jessica Dallow is Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies

This series is our home for innovative research in the fields of art and visual studies. It includes monographs and targeted edited collections that provide new insights into visual culture and art practice, theory, and research. Mapping Paradigms in Modern and Contemporary Art Poetic Cartography Simonetta Moro A History of Solar Power Art and Design Alex Nathanson The Arabesque from Kant to Comics Cordula Grewe Art After Instagram Art Spaces, Audiences, Aesthetics Lachlan MacDowall and Kylie Budge The Artist-Philosopher and Poetic Hermeneutics On Trauma George Smith Art, the Sublime, and Movement Spaced Out Amanda du Preez Visual Culture and the Forensic Culture, Memory, Ethics David Houston Jones Posthuman and Nonhuman Entanglements in Contemporary Art and the Body Justyna Stępień Race, Gender, and Identity in American Equine Art 1832 to the Present Jessica Dallow For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Advances-in-Art-and-Visual-Studies/book-series/RAVS

Race, Gender, and Identity in American Equine Art 1832 to the Present

Jessica Dallow

Cover image: Richard Thorpe McLean, Draft with Orange Doors. 1976. Oil on canvas. 48 3/4 × 48 3/4 × 2 in. 2008.19.727. Yale University Art Gallery. Richard Brown Baker, B. A. 1935, Collection. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean. First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Jessica Dallow The right of Jessica Dallow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-1-138-49088-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-25816-4 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-03434-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781351034340 Typeset in Sabon by MPS Limited, Dehradun

Contents

1

2

3

4

List of Figures Acknowledgments

vi xi

Introduction: But the Horse Is Much, Much More

1

Interspecies Entanglements in Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

16

Bone, Speed, and Blood: Schreiber & Sons and the Photographic Equine Portrait

50

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well: The Rodeo Cowgirl in Early Twentieth-Century Real Photo Postcards

84

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

128

Epilogue Index

172 179

Figures

0.1 Richard Thorpe McLean, Veronica’s Shanghai Duchess. 1993. Oil on linen. Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York 0.2 Mark Tansey, The Innocent Eye Test. 1981. Oil on canvas. 78 in. × 10 ft. (198.1 × 304.8 cm). © Mark Tansey. Gift of Jan Cowles and Charles Cowles, in honor of William S. Lieberman, 1988 (1988.183). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY 1.1 Edward Troye, Tobacconist, with Botts’ Manuel and Botts’ Ben. 1833. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: Katherine Wetzel © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 1.2 Edward Troye, Medley and Groom. 1832. Oil on canvas. Private collection. From Genevieve Baird Lacer, Edward Troye: Painter of Thoroughbred Stories (Prospect, KY: Harmony House, 2006), 157 1.3 Edward Troye, Trifle. 1832. Oil on canvas. Collection of Kirk and Palmer Ragsdale, Rockwall, Texas. From Genevieve Baird Lacer, Edward Troye: Painter of Thoroughbred Stories (Prospect, KY: Harmony House, 2006), 157 1.4 Edward Troye, Richard Singleton with “Viley’s Harry, Charles and Lew.” 1834. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: Katherine Wetzel. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 1.5 George Stubbs, RA, Hambletonian, Rubbing Down. 1800. Oil on canvas. Mount Stewart, The Londonderry Collection (National Trust) 1.6 Edward Troye, The “Undefeated” Asteroid, with Ansel (His Trainer) and Brown Dick (Jockey). 1864. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: Katherine Wetzel. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 1.7 Slave Medallion. 1787–1788. Stoneware (jasperware). Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Dwight and Lucille Beeson. Photo: Sean Pathasema 1.8 Wadsworth Jarrell, Mile and a Quarter #2. 1993. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Wadsworth Jarrell. Photo: George Whitten 2.1 Schreiber & Sons, Lexington. 1872. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library

2

10

17

17

19

20 22

33

35 37

51

Figures vii 2.2

2.3

2.4

2.5

2.6

2.7

2.8

2.9

2.10

2.11

2.12

3.1

3.2

3.3

Schreiber & Sons, Hambletonian. 1873. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library Schreiber & Sons, Portrait of a Dog. Between 1870 and 1880. Albumen on stereograph mount. 3.5 × 7 in. Marian S. Carson Collection at the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division Schreiber & Sons, Alix. 1895. 8 3/4 × 7 3/4 in. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs: Photography Collection. New York Public Library Thomas Eakins, Clinker. 1892. Painted plaster, wire armature, muslin. 25 3/4 × 25 3/4 × 4 1/2 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with the Center for American Art Fund, 2009, 2009-83-1 Schreiber & Sons, Longfellow. ca. 1874. Albumen on stereograph mount. From series Animal Studies from Nature. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs: Photography Collection. New York Public Library Schreiber & Sons, Dan Patch. ca. 1903. 8 3/4 × 7 3/4 in. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs: Photography Collection. New York Public Library Schreiber & Sons, Longfellow. 1874. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library Edward Troye, Lexington. ca. 1866. Salted paper print. 8 3/4 × 11 1/4 in. National Sporting Library & Museum, Harry Worcester Smith Archive Schreiber & Sons, Flora Temple. 1874. Albumen print, 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library Schreiber & Sons, Asteroid. 1872. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library Schreiber & Sons, George Wilkes. 1874. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library Unknown photographer, Vera McGinnis Trick Riding (on white horse). Black and white photograph. National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, Fort Worth, Texas W.S. Bowman, Cowgirls Standing Race. ca. 1914. Photographic postcard. National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, Fort Worth, Texas W.S. Bowman, Bertha Blancett on Eagle, Pendleton Round-Up. ca. 1920. Photographic postcard. Photographic Study Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 2005.023.1

52

53

55

56

58

59

60

61

63

66

73

85

86

91

viii

Figures

3.4 Ralph R. Doubleday, Mabel Strickland Sitting on Bench in Studio Pose. ca. 1925. Dry plate negative. Ralph R. Doubleday Rodeo Photographs Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 79.026.1966 3.5 W.S. Bowman, Princess Red Bird on “Blue Blazes.” Riding in the cowgirl’s bucking contest—winning 3rd money—Round-Up. 1915. Photographic postcard. The University of Oregon Libraries, Special Collections, and University Archives, Charles Wellington Furlong papers, PH244_0057 3.6 John Addison Stryker, Riding High on Easy Money. 1920. Photographic postcard. Collection of the author 3.7 Erwin E. Smith, Female Bronc Rider [Ruth Roach] at a Texas Rodeo. ca. 1920–1926. Gelatin dry plate negative. Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, LC.S6.567 3.8 Ralph R. Doubleday, Rose Smith on Jiggs, Pendleton Round-Up. 1918. Photographic postcard. The Denver Public Library, Western History Collection. Z-638 3.9 Eadweard Muybridge, “Tom” walking, saddled; female rider nude, Plate 583. From Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, 1872–1885, published under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, plates printed by Photo-Gravure Company. Philadelphia, 1887 3.10 Ralph R. Doubleday, “Billie Buck” Objects to Bonnie McCarroll Riding, Pendleton, Round-Up. 1922. Photographic postcard. Bruce McCarroll Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. RC2006.076.106-1 3.11 W.S. Bowman, Bonnie McCarroll Thrown from Silver. 1915. Miniature photographic postcard. Collection of the author 3.12 Unknown photographer, Mable [sic] Strickland Trick Riding. Pendleton Ore. Association Photo. ca. 1915. Photographic Study Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 2005.041 3.13 Charles M. Russell, Bucking Horse and Cowgirl. ca. 1925. Ink with transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite underdrawing on paper. 13 3/8 × 11 1/4 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Amon G. Carter Collection, 1961.187 3.14 Mary Bonner, Les Cowboys. 1925. Etching with hand coloring. Collection of the McNay Art Museum, Gift of Katy Calogeras. This etching is an artist’s proof of the third frame of Les Cowboys that Bonner exhibited in 1925 at the Salon d’Automne, Paris 3.15 Charles Simpson, The Stable Tent, Showing Sea Chests and Saddlery. 1925. Crayon on board. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 1980.05.07. Illustrated in El Rodeo (1925), 88 3.16 Charles Simpson, Mounting a Bronk from the Chute. 1925. Gouache on board. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 1980.05.01. Illustrated in El Rodeo (1925), 114

92

93 94

95

96

97

100 100

103

109

111

112

114

Figures ix 4.1

4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8

4.9 4.10

4.11

4.12 4.13

4.14

4.15

4.16

4.17

4.18

Richard Thorpe McLean, Native Diver. Lithograph on paper [after a 1968 painting]. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. John Barton Payne Fund. Photo: David Stover. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Richard Thorpe McLean, Rustler Charger. 1971. Oil on canvas. Bridgeman Images Richard Thorpe McLean, Mackey Marie. 1971. Oil on canvas. Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York Richard Thorpe McLean, Jack Magill’s Bourbon Jet. 1980. Print [after a 1979 painting]. Collection of the author Unknown photographer (Potter?), Thunder, Oklahoma City, OK. 1979. Color photograph Richard Thorpe McLean, Satin Doll. 1975. Watercolor on paper. Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York Richard Thorpe McLean, Dixie Coast. 1980. Lithograph [after a 1974 painting]. Collection of the author Richard Thorpe McLean, Draft with Orange Doors. 1976. Oil on canvas. 48 3/4 × 48 3/4 × 2 in. 2008.19.727. Yale University Art Gallery. Richard Brown Baker, B. A. 1935, Collection. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean Richard Thorpe McLean, Kahlua Lark. 1980. Lithograph [after a 1979 painting]. Collection of the author Raphaelle Peale, Still Life with Apples, Sherry, and Tea Cake. 1822. Oil on wood. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon Richard Thorpe McLean, Whistlejacket. 2011. Oil on canvas. Collection of Ian McLean. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean George Stubbs, Whistlejacket. about 1762. Oil on canvas. 292 × 246.4 cm. NG 6569. © The National Gallery, London Richard Thorpe McLean, Hertfordshire Morning (Capriccio for Tessa). 1998. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean Richard Thorpe McLean, Chub’s Powderface. 1969. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean Frederic Remington, A Cold Morning on the Range. ca. 1904. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of American Museum of Western Art—The Anschutz Collection. Photo: William J. O’Connor Richard Thorpe McLean, Synbad’s Mt. Ranier. 1968. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean Richard Thorpe McLean, Foxy Mac. 1973. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Hallmark Art Collection, Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City Missouri Richard Thorpe McLean, All American Standard Miss. 1968. Oil on canvas. Collection of di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art

129 130 131 131 135 136 138

139 140

141

142 143

144

147

148

149

150 151

x Figures 4.19 Richard Thorpe McLean, Wishing Well Bridge. 1972. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Gift of Sydney and Frances Lewis. Photo: Travis Fullerton. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 4.20 Frederic Leighton, Portrait of May Sartoris. ca. 1860. Oil on canvas. 59 7/8 × 35 1/2 in. Framed: 71 1/2 × 48 × 5 3/4 in. ACF 1964.03. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas 4.21 Rob Hess, Amigo, Estes Park, CO. ca. 1983. Color photograph 4.22 Richard Thorpe McLean, Sacramento Glider. 1973. Oil on canvas. NASM 2017-02875. National Air and Space Museum. The Stuart M. Speiser Photorealist Collection. Gift of Stuart M. Speiser 4.23 Deborah Butterfield, Monekana. 2001. Bronze. 96 × 129 1/2 × 63 1/2 in. 2002.3. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gift of the American Art Forum, Mr. and Mrs. Frank O. Rushing, Shelby and Frederick Gans and museum purchase. © Deborah Butterfield 5.1 Ralph R. Doubleday, Cowgirls Headed for the Roundup. Triangle Ranch. 1921. Photographic postcard. Ralph R. Doubleday Photographic Postcards, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Doubleday 066

152

153 156

157

161

175

Acknowledgments

So many people have helped me over the many years that it has taken me to write this book. I thank my colleagues and students in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Cathleen Cummings has provided invaluable feedback and encouragement when it was much needed. I am also grateful for financial support from the Virginia Historical Society, the Kentucky Historical Society, the College of Arts and Sciences at UAB, and the Department of Art and Art History at UAB. I have further benefitted from research guidance from the staffs of the Virginia Historical Society, the Kentucky Historical Society, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the National Sporting Library and Museum, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame and Museum, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the American Heritage Center. I thank my parents, Suzy Dallow and Peter Dallow, for nurturing my childhood horse obsessions that are still very much present; the generous horse people who I have been lucky enough to know, especially Gail Knieriem and Allison Majerik Black; and the wonderful animals—including Sam, Milo, Disney, Poppy, Thunder, Dingo, Elijah, and Austin—with whom I have shared my life. Without Matt Coleman, I don’t know what I’d do. Thank you for bearing with me. This book is for my mother. I hope that somehow she knows it exists.

Introduction: But the Horse Is Much, Much More

In an interview for the Archives of American Art, the California Bay Area painter Richard McLean (1934–2014) remembered when he first settled on the horse as an artistic theme. Around 1966, he had begun what he called his “animal period,” making paintings of chickens, sheep, and cows based on encyclopedia and magazine reproductions. On a whim, however, he decided to photograph an artist friend—a “weekend cowboy”—astride a horse. One of these photographs became the source for McLean’s first horse painting, with which he knew he’d found the perfect subject: “I mean, a cow’s a cow anywhere, but the horse and its historical significance, its mythology is much, much more.”1 Though one could take issue with McLean’s hasty dismissal of the cow, his attraction to the horse is understandable, the animal’s very being, and attendant representation, capable of rousing feelings ranging from awe to empathy. By picturing both horses and people with horses in present-day horsey settings, McLean ingeniously exploited the incongruities between contemporary, conceptually driven painting and historical equine and equestrian art and portraiture. His early horse-related canvases, which appropriated equine magazine imagery, de­ pict gallant cowboys astride glistening steeds and victorious jockeys aboard race­ horses to reprise familiar artistic tropes of English and European mounted aristocrats and celebrated racehorses, and rugged American cowboys with their faithful equine companions. McLean’s later paintings, reproducing the artist’s own snapshots taken at local and regional horse shows, prominently feature women and horses (Veronica’s Shanghai Duchess, 1993; figure 0.1). Relying less on historical allusions and more on what McLean observed, these images capture with greater accuracy the gendered make-up of late twentieth-century equestrianism. They further reflect both the abundant narratives of women and horses and the history of painted and photo­ graphic portraits of female equestrians, including those of early modern royalty and, as equestrian pursuits gained popularity and accessibility during the nineteenth century, of modern middle-class women. Yet the fact that McLean’s human subjects remained predominantly white evidences American equine sport’s historical lack of ethnic and racial diversity and equestrianism’s associations with whiteness. How visual imagery has negotiated, contested, and reinforced equestrianism’s and equine sport’s patterns of inclusion and exclusion is the pretext of this book, which examines images of horses and humans in American art from 1832 until the present. By tracing equine and equestrian art’s evolution in the United States, it counters conventional understandings of genres that are still, even with recent scholarly attention to equestrianism’s and equine sport’s global dimensions2, deeply enmeshed in traditions of elite European and English culture. By focusing on the construction of identity—of DOI: 10.4324/9781351034340-1

2 Introduction

Figure 0.1 Richard Thorpe McLean, Veronica’s Shanghai Duchess. 1993. Oil on linen. Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York.

women, Black men, and the animals themselves involved in horseracing, rodeo, and horse show competitions—it offers an interpretation of equestrian and equine art rooted in the changing relationships between humans and horses, and in the racial and gendered formations of modern American equestrianism and equine sport. Throughout this book, I use both the terms equestrianism and equine (or eques­ trian) sport in my discussions of images of horseracing, rodeo, and horse show subjects since they are not mutually exclusive, but inform and inflect each other. As Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik have noted, “equestrian life includes sport and hobby, work, and leisure”; its participants may be at work or play, or some com­ bination of both.3 In the United States, horseracing began during the seventeenth century as a recreational or leisure activity, with contests arranged by wealthy gen­ tlemen who raced their horses for amusement, status making, and wagers on avail­ able land. During the early decades of the nineteenth century, it developed into a commercial enterprise, with formal races, jockey clubs, purses for winners, and of course gambling. This period saw the rise of turf men who, especially in the Chesapeake region, overtook wealthy planters as key players in the Thoroughbred flat racing industry. While some had amassed fortunes as planters, merchants, and politicians (or some combination thereof), turf men also came from the middle and working classes, rising through the industry’s ranks as stable owners, trainers, track managers, and race promoters.4 Trotting or harness racing followed a similar tra­ jectory, as impromptu races waged on urban thoroughfares and country roads transformed into what Melvin Adelman has called America’s first modern sport, with, by the mid-1850s, over seventy US tracks offering organized races attended by thousands of spectators.5 Unlike horseracing, which emerged first in the East and South, rodeo developed in the West and Southwest. It too, however, sprung from

Introduction

3

informal contests, in this instance staged amongst cow hands whose equestrian and cattle wrangling practices largely developed from Spanish, Mexican, and Latin American ranching traditions. Professional male and female rodeo athletes emerged during the early decades of the twentieth century as purses increased and rodeo promoters began offering contracts to competitors. Rodeo, like the horse show, continues to attract amateur athletes as well as professionals. Horse shows, where participants compete in English and Western riding disciplines including dressage, equitation, reining, jumping, pleasure, and eventing, combine elements of equestrian leisure and sport. Amateurs usually participate for fun, to hone equestrian skills, and for the opportunity to compete. For professionals, equestrian sport is a business centered around training horses and riders in preparation for shows, earning prize money offered in classes, and breeding, selling, and buying horses. Consequently, within equestrianism and equestrian sport exist multiple divisions of labor, including those of grooms, breeders, riders, trainers, and owners. Often these divisions mirror and reproduce broader entrenched social and racialized class hier­ archies, for example, the wealthy white owner and working-class groom of color, but they also generate hierarchies particular to equestrian cultures, such as those based on professional or amateur status, or expertise level (a beginner versus advanced rider).6 A related politics of class also applies to race and show horses who may in turn reinforce human class formations. As Kendra Coulter explains: In equestrian culture, horses are socially constructed as a form of capital that reflects relative wealth and status, and, as such, are used to demarcate distinctions among human participants. … Upper class people with the economic capital to obtain [equine bodies best suited for performance and best trained at it] have heightened chances of success in the show ring and the most opportunities for higher status in the symbolic competitions.7 Throughout this book, horses are represented as forms of capital, from Thoroughbred racehorses that symbolize owners’ status, to trick riding and bucking horses that facilitate rodeo women’s social and economic mobility, to show horses that may represent privilege and partnership within their respective equestrian cul­ tures yet in McLean’s hands also become satirical symptoms of the horse’s waning visibility in contemporary culture. This book also draws on the substantial body of scholarship addressing gender in equestrianism and equine sports that, with class, race, and ethnicity, also informs: who rides and on what types and breeds of horses; how one rides—for example, aside (using a sidesaddle) or astride; how one presents oneself on a horse in manner and costume; and in what disciplines one may participate or compete. Women’s eques­ trian pursuits expanded during the eighteenth and especially nineteenth centuries, when, during the Victorian era, bourgeois horsewomen emulating the traditional pursuits of the aristocracy challenged class and gender boundaries.8 This period also saw the rise of female athletic culture and organized women’s sports.9 Equestrianism, however, often proved even more troubling than other forms of physical exertions because of the contact between women’s and animals’ animate bodies. Riding styles and dress thus necessitated “strict sartorial codes and rules of deportment,” since the “fine line between fair equestrian and the fast woman was not difficult to cross.”10 Rigid guidelines on dress and tack (together known as turnout) are still part and

4 Introduction parcel of contemporary equestrian sports and showing and are central to its per­ formative aesthetics.11 Today, at least in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States, women form the majority of riders at stables and shows, contributing to in­ creasing understandings of equestrianism as feminine or feminized.12 Men, however, continue to dominate the top tiers of equestrian disciplinary competition and orga­ nizational leadership positions.13 Perceptions of horsemanship and equine expertise also continue to be rooted in masculine traditions of animal subjugation and taming, especially in such training techniques and sports as natural horsemanship, Western riding, and rodeo that center the tradition of the cowboy.14 Yet masculinity also figures prominently in histories of English riding as well. Monica Mattfeld has ex­ amined how eighteenth-century English masculinity was shaped on and around the horse through riding manuals that expressed contemporary models of political so­ vereignty to cartoons that satirized effeminate equestrian theatrical spectacles.15 Kari Weil has also shown how theories of horsemanship and horses responded to anxieties over modern man’s emasculation, with French manhood increasingly projected onto the Thoroughbred horse, a breed that was considered simultaneously pure (aristo­ cratic) and scientifically engineered (bourgeois). In a period when the French race was thought to be in decline the Thoroughbred horse and equestrianism, as symbols of health, morality, progressive scientific management, and “good” colonialism, became means of rejuvenating modern French culture.16 If class and gender intersect within the history of the Thoroughbred horse, so too does the modern making of the breed reveal how “the otherwise imprecise, nineteenth-century definition of ‘race’ was given ‘scientific’ explanation in its appli­ cation to the equine population.”17 In western culture, the Thoroughbred breed came to be known as a pure race of blood-horses, an apt mirror of the elite men who owned and raced them, even though the breed developed by crossing English horses with North African and Asian stock.18 How methods and theories of equine breeding intersect with notions of human race and identity inform my interpretations of nineteenth-century paintings of American Thoroughbreds and Black men—images that make visible the paradox of Black Americans’ key roles in shaping an animal so connected to white privilege—and photographic portraits of trotting horses, pro­ duced during a period when theorists and breeders, concerned over status and profit, battled over whether bloodlines or performance record would define the Standardbred breed. This book further contends that equine and equestrian art and portraiture is a worthwhile and unique subject of inquiry because of its inclusion of animal subjects. The representation of animals involves the manipulation of their bodies through artistic mediums, modeling how animal bodies are manipulated in real life through riding, breeding, farming, and pet keeping. Equestrianism and equine sport, centered especially on riding, enact particular encounters between horse and human bodies that involve a range of interspecies sensory experiences which are generated through various communicatory modes, namely touch and proprioception (the perception of the position and movements of the body), but also vision and sound. Equestrian activities may thus produce a radical form of co-embodiment that informs both a human’s and animal’s experience of self.19 Though visual art is fundamentally per­ ceptual, this book centralizes the intercorporeal dynamics20 of riding and training horses to argue that human and animal identity—both real and represented—must always be understood through each other, whether in the relationships between the

Introduction

5

human and animal subjects within a painting’s or photograph’s frame, between viewers and an image’s subjects, or between artists and the animals they depict.

Let Us not Praise Famous Horses Organized into four chapters, this book presents a series of case studies that span the past two centuries and emerge from different, US geographic centers of artistic production—the South, the East, and the West. It proceeds chronologically beginning in 1832 and covers: Edward Troye’s antebellum portraits of racehorses and their Black American jockeys and handlers; the development of American equine portrait photography after the Civil War by the Philadelphia firm Schreiber & Sons, one of the first to specialize in animals; early twentieth-century representations of rodeo cowgirls and their mounts and the rise of the Real Photo Postcard; and Richard McLean’s contemporary Photorealist paintings of horse show competitors. Through these examples, I aim to challenge the marginalization of persons of color and women within the history of American equestrianism and equine sport, even within what has been characterized as its increasing feminization, and reveal how animal identity both informs and has been modeled by cultural, gendered, and racialized models of human identity. I realize that my examples are by no means comprehensive or exhaustive and there are many other equine-themed artworks I could have included. Much more, for example, needs to be written about the horse’s representation in North American Indigenous art, the critical contributions of Indigenous peoples to the development of equestrianism, and the history of native, Indigenous horse breeds and types. To do so, however, compels expanding notions of what artworks belong to the genres of equestrian and equine art. Traditionally, these genres are associated with commemorative portraits of military leaders and royalty, or with equine field sports, a subset of the country pursuits of the historically leisured, upper class that include hunting, horse racing, shooting, and fishing. As a result, Malcolm Cormack has ex­ plained, sporting art has traditionally been considered a niche subject, generated and consumed by a select class of people, and denigrated by art historians as “mere decoration” and unworthy of intellectual inquiry, evidenced by Sir Ellis Waterhouse’s 1953 statement that: to discuss the Sartorius tribe [a family of sporting artists] and such painters is no business of the historian of art, no matter how bitter the accusations of neglect are wont to be from those specialist writers who sometimes confuse the history of art with praising famous horses.21 Cormack’s catalog of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Mellon Collection of British, French, and American sporting art forms a rejoinder to such past art historical contempt by contextualizing sporting imagery within period politics, cultural mores, social formations, scientific inquiry, and attitudes towards animals. Yet out of over four hundred pages, it devotes only seventy to American sporting art, a result of multiple factors, including the much later development of leisure sports in a young country, settlement patterns, a class structure very different from that of England and Europe, religious opposition to gambling, and Paul Mellon’s collecting habits. Its American entries comprise expected “country” subjects such as hunter and racehorse portraits by Alvan Fisher, Edward Troye, and Henry Delattre, water and game fowl

6 Introduction hunting scenes by Thomas Eakins, Charles Deas, and George Catlin, and a Winslow Homer hare coursing canvas, in addition to Albert Bierstadt’s more anomalous oil sketches of chestnut and grey horses against plain backgrounds that may have served as studies for his grand Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain landscapes.22 Included because they are part of the Mellon Collection and because they feature horses, Bierstadt’s sketches exist on the fringes of what is normally accepted as sporting art. They nonetheless presage a more expansive conception of the genre to encompass artworks that have been previously assigned to art historical categories of landscape or art of the American West. My book builds on this inclination, contending that both rodeo photographs and McLean’s Photorealist paintings relate as much to genres of equine and equestrian art as Troye’s or the Schreibers’ portraits of race­ horses do. In so doing, my focus on a diverse range of American material produced over the last two centuries shrinks the chasm of scholarship on American equine and equestrian art by showing how animal representation adapted to and was trans­ formed by cultural and geographic circumstances. The rise of equine portraiture in the United States coincided with the emerging sport of horseracing. Patrons during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries com­ prised landowners and merchants on the Eastern seaboard and in the Mid-Atlantic States. Those few artists who painted animals often did so with an amateur hand. The Swiss-born, academically-trained artist Edward Troye (1808–1874) arrived in Philadelphia in 1831 and, after painting his first horse canvas the following year, emerged as America’s leading equine painter, pursuing horses and patrons across the country as Thoroughbred racing spread through the South and the then western states of Kentucky and Tennessee.23 Beyond his main subject matter—the horse—that Troye spent much of his life in Alabama, making his last home at Owens Crossroads, near Madison, has driven my interest in the artist whose career was sustained by slavery. Though some Troye scholars have expressed frustration with my readings of Troye’s art as products of slavery, I believe his work cannot be understood outside of this context. Troye emulated the aristocratic sporting pictures of his Old World predecessors; yet he often included the enslaved Black Americans who rode and cared for Thoroughbreds, inventively adapting tradition to suit his context. Chapter 1 examines Troye’s paintings created between 1832 and 1874 that depict Thoroughbred racehorses with Black jockeys and handlers. Extending scho­ larship linking equine breeding to theories of race, it explores how the unique cir­ cumstances of the American horse industry with its largely Black, enslaved slave labor force shaped period, culturally specific understandings of the American Thoroughbred horse. It ultimately interprets Troye’s paintings as representations of interspecies entanglements and as the products of spaces—the plantation, racetrack, and stables and their connected schemata of power—where animal and human biopower was constituted and employed by and for different factions. As the nineteenth century progressed, American racing enthusiasts turned their attention to trotting horses as the sport ignited on the East Coast during the 1850s and 1860s, propelled in part by the collapse of the southern Thoroughbred industry during the Civil War. In the 1870s, Schreiber & Sons, a Philadelphia photography studio run by Franz Schreiber (1803–1892) and his children, produced some of the earliest photographs of trotting horses, at a moment in which trotters, originally just common or grade animals able to trot fast, evolved into a new breed: the Standardbred horse.24 In 1874, the Schreibers published Portraits of Noted Horses of

Introduction

7

America, a book of fifty photographs of the nation’s horses. Though the Schreibers were not the first to attempt a comprehensive portfolio of American horses—Troye, himself, had tried—they were the first to successfully publish one. I first became aware of Portraits of Noted Horses of America while researching Troye and was lucky enough to find a copy in a nearby library.25 Troye’s documentarian Alexander Mackay-Smith mentions that he stopped painting altogether the year Schreiber & Sons first visited Woodburn Farm, owned by Alexander John Alexander, who, with his brother Robert Aitcheson Alexander, were two of Troye’s great patrons.26 Though age and health factors surely also helped speed the end of Troye’s career, photography ushered in a more accurate means of representing animals that proved critical to breeders striving to produce more valuable horses. The medium also of­ fered, through stereographs and other forms of photographic postcards, inexpensive, more easily circulated and consumable images that often served to bolster a horse’s renown. Chapter 2 argues that Portraits of Noted Horses can be read as another iteration of equine portraiture, from painting to photographs “taken from life,” aimed at the same audiences who had in the past collected sporting prints or com­ missioned equine paintings. Yet the Schreibers’ book of photographs signals an im­ portant departure from conventional animal picturing in the way it places individual animal identities in tension with collective identity. Borrowing from the visual tra­ ditions of natural history illustration and comparative anatomy, it relies on the profile portrait that best enables viewers to compare animals. Drawing on contemporary debates about breeding and heredity, it structures its photographs into unfolding genealogical micronarratives of the trotter and American Thoroughbred. In so doing, Portraits of Noted Horses of America reveals the transformation of equine por­ traiture from its more customary role as a visual emblem of its owner or a memento of its animal subject into something akin to scientific illustration that advances an ideal identity for the emergent American trotting horse. Equine- and equestrian-themed imagery expanded throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to picture not only Thoroughbred and Standardbred racehorses, but also new types (and later breeds) of American horses. Subsequently, though elite sportsmen played a central role especially in American equine portraiture’s early de­ velopment, its subjects and audiences expanded along a populist line in connection with changes in the horse industry and with the rise of photography. This book ex­ amines these differences in patronage, market, and consumption. The settlement of the West and consequent development of the western livestock industry created an in­ creasing need for cowponies and range horses. These horses, which had been developed over the preceding century by crossing Spanish Barbs (introduced by Spanish colonizers and bred by the Chickasaw tribe of the Mississippi Valley as well as Spanish settlers in the Southwest), English stock, Mustangs (another horse introduced by the Spanish and used by Indigenous Plains peoples), and Indigenous Native American horses, proved well suited to range work, with their compact statures, muscle, even demeanors, and speed.27 They became the primary equine stock used in rodeo, a sport that originated in Spanish and Mexican vaquero (cattle driving and ranching) traditions and that grew in popularity throughout the United States after the closing of the frontier because of its associations with a mythic Old West. Rodeo photographic postcards, often sold as souvenirs at rodeos and collected via mailorder by rodeo enthusiasts, captured the feats of rodeo contestants, many of whom were women, aboard both their trained partners and purportedly wild, bucking horses during rodeo’s “Golden Age.”28

8 Introduction I first encountered a photograph of an early twentieth-century rodeo cowgirl when my colleague, aware of my interest in Western art and my equestrian background, brought me a souvenir from her visit to the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas: a contemporary reproduction of one of Walter S. Bowman’s Real Photo Postcards (RPPCs) of Tillie Baldwin and a horse performing in a trick riding contest at the 1912 Pendleton Round-Up. It reminded me of a 1920s photograph by Otho Hartley (1895–1964) hanging on the wall in my mother’s house showing a row of cowgirls perched atop a fence at a Pacific Northwest rodeo. I also remembered another rodeo photograph in my mother’s collection by more recent documentarian of rodeo Louise Serpa (1925–2012)29 depicting a saddle bronc rearing straight up as it bursts from the shoot with a cowboy clinging to its back (Widow Maker, 1963). Because I have always viewed rodeo as an inhumane sport, I feel ambivalent about the Serpa image, fascinated by the horse’s extraordinary movement and rider’s agility, but repulsed by the scene’s violence. Yet armed with the knowledge that women obviously competed in rodeo events long before rodeo’s in­ troduction of barrel racing and enthralled by the Serpa photograph, I wanted to know if Serpa, a female photographer, also made photographs of women riding bucking horses like the cowboy in my mother’s photograph. To my disappointment, I dis­ covered she did not because her rodeo photographs dated from the era after pro­ fessionally sanctioned rodeo restricted women from rough stock events. In the process, however, I found a fascinating trove of early RPPCs, taken by male pho­ tographers, of women riding bucking horses during the first half of the twentieth century. As rodeo historian Linda Rose Sanderson has also expressed, these images “seized my imagination … [and] I began to wrestle with their meaning.”30 Chapter 3 accordingly centers on the photographic documentation of women rodeo competitors and their horses, disseminated in the form of Real Photo Postcards from circa 1912 to the beginning of World War II. Sold at rodeos, drugstores, and by mail order, these postcards helped turn rodeo cowgirls and cowboys into celebrities. Though many studies of rodeo women exist, most use RPPCs as illustrations of these women’s existences. This chapter instead looks specifically at how the RPPC constructed the cowgirl through her relationship with animals. It moves beyond the photograph’s evidentiary or illustrative qualities to consider its intersections between female per­ former and audience, mediated through the representation of the horse since women tended to concentrate in the disciplines of saddle bronc and trick riding. Such images of independent, sporting women represented on these popular cards differed from Western American fine art that typically depicted cowgirls, frontier women, and Indigenous women in submissive and ornamental roles. As cheap, entertaining images, readily available to the public, RPPCs show women in empowered, physical roles, their identities mutually bound to and informed by those animals with whom they performed. Richard McLean’s contemporary paintings of horse show competitors and settings form the focus of chapter 4. The first horse shows were held in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century. These, in which participants competed in events such as pleasure, jumping, and driving, welcomed all types and breeds of horses. While many horse shows still do, they have also become more specialized, organized around particular disciplines like dressage, cutting, reining, and jumping, or around specific breeds. Horse shows allow people to compete, win prize money, and show off their own and their animals’ abilities. They also offer points that accrue throughout a

Introduction

9

season to gain admittance to year-end finals or over a horse’s lifetime to attain titles such as world champion. Horse shows are now often sanctioned through either disciplinary associations that govern equine sport’s rules and customs, such as the United States Equestrian Federation (originally the American Horse Shows Association) or National Reined Cow Horse Association, or breed organizations such as the American Quarter Horse Association or Appaloosa Horse Club that have historically, since the nineteenth century, served to preserve and determine lineages and histories of horses. Horse shows thus function as another facet in the increasing web of breed registries and sanctioning bodies to bolster horses’ economic capital for commercial purposes. Show levels, however, vary, with higher level shows offering significant prize money and attracting elite national participants and lower level shows gauged to local, more everyday horse owners and riders. Horse shows are often the subject of California Photorealist Richard McLean’s contemporary paint­ ings, which, as I argue in chapter 4, reimagine the equestrian and equine portrait for contemporary audiences. McLean began to paint the horse during the 1960s in an attempt to revitalize a historical genre for a contemporary art world more interested in conceptual art and new media, basing his paintings first on equine magazine re­ productions and later on his own snapshots. Art collectors and horse enthusiasts alike sought out his work; he even began to accept commissions from horse owners. In describing his animal-themed paintings, McLean once said that they “act” as painting, performing droll send-ups of historical equestrian and equine portraiture.31 But though he may have intended them as ironic riffs, they emerged as serious images that signaled contemporary art’s renewed preoccupation with animals and docu­ mented the social patterns of twentieth-century equestrian culture, including eques­ trianism’s increasing feminization. By situating McLean’s paintings within both the histories of Photorealism and animal picturing, I show how the artist’s inclusion of equine subjects undermines one of Photorealism’s central objectives: to create friction between reality and representation. Instead, McLean’s artworks suture real and re­ presented animals even more closely together.

A Cow Is not a Cow Anywhere To conclude, I return to McLean’s statement distinguishing the historically significant horse from the unremarkable cow. But a cow is not a cow anywhere. Take, for ex­ ample, the history of art, where cattle representations are charged with symbolic import, from livestock portraiture—Troye painted many cattle portraits for livestock breeders and farmers—to western frontier landscapes and pastoral scenes where they may signify status, virility, cultural identity, agricultural bounty, animal husbandry, or settler colonialism. Belonging to the tradition of bucolic, rural scenes is Dutch painter Paulus Potter’s The Young Bull (1647; Mauritshuis), a picture of a bull, re­ putedly a symbol of prosperity in the early modern Dutch world. He stands alongside a cow, ram, ewe, and lamb, with a field of grazing and sleeping cattle in the back­ ground. Curiously, however, Potter rendered his farmyard creatures life-size, on a scale typically reserved for important historical and mythological human figures, confounding understandings of the picture as a typical rural landscape and asserting a new status for animal subjects. The Young Bull is also notable as an exemplar of Dutch naturalism given the artist’s scrupulous attention to such details as a pile of manure on the ground, the flies buzzing around the bull’s body, the spittle forming

10 Introduction along his lower lip, and his varied coat textures, with curling hair covering his neck, cowlicks at his withers, and fuzzy tufts along the top of his tail. With deep brown, nearly black eyes, the bull turns to look at us, the viewers, demanding our attention and affirming his sentience. Potter’s exacting naturalism assumes a pivotal role in contemporary artist Mark Tansey’s The Innocent Eye Test (1981; figure 0.2), another immense painting of a cow, in this instance staring at Potter’s canvas. Several men surround the bovine, anxiously awaiting her response. Will she react to Potter’s bull as a live animal, with ardor, fright, or even furor like the Marquess of Rockingham’s racehorse Whistlejacket ostensibly did upon perceiving George Stubbs’s portrait of him as that of a rival horse? One man holds a mop just in case. Or will she distinguish re­ presentation from reality? Done in grisaille, or grey monotone, a reference to his­ torical academic painting, early photographs, and modern illustration, Tansey’s painting has been said to speculate about the relevancy of realist art (and the artist’s own practice) in the twentieth century. It is also, according to Tansey, a meditation on reality, with reality articulated on multiple levels: the image’s depicted scene, the picture plane itself, and the world in which both picture and artist exist.32 Tansey’s title derives from the nineteenth-century English art critic John Ruskin’s appeal to relocate painting’s affect in “the innocence of the eye; that is to say, a sort of childish perception of these flat stains of colour, merely as such, without consciousness of

Figure 0.2 Mark Tansey, The Innocent Eye Test, 1981. Oil on canvas. 78 in. × 10 ft. (198.1 × 304.8 cm). © Mark Tansey. Gift of Jan Cowles and Charles Cowles, in honor of William S. Lieberman, 1988 (1988.183). Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image source: Art Resource, NY.

Introduction

11

what they indicate”—in other words, as Arthur Danto explains, in what strikes the eye in an instant of pure vision, before the theoretical intellect can go to work.33 Such “innocent” perceptual responses, Danto claims, have little, or really nothing to do with culture or history. They are hard wired into human and nonhuman animal physiology, a view supported and complicated by nonhuman animals’ capabilities in recognizing and differentiating a visual image’s forms. For Danto, animals help us distinguish the threshold of pictorial competence, which requires being located in culture and history, the province of humans, and what it means to be human.34 Danto’s discussion of animal responses to visual imagery, however, offers another useful proposition to consider: that because a cow may not understand Tansey’s painting as a rumination on realism doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a viewpoint of its own.35 To acknowledge this requires abandoning any premise of visual mastery, in an attempt to recalculate art’s affect and in turn art history’s and theory’s viability. Tansey’s painting also turns on its implicit humor: cows don’t look at art! Art depicting cows isn’t made for cows. In so doing, Tansey’s joke highlights one of the serious issues inherent in animal representation: that animal art reveals more about human attitudes towards animals than about animals themselves.36 Because animals cannot author their own historical accounts, art portraying animals is ultimately anthropocentric.37 Consequently, as Weil states, animals “have been either invisible or locked in representations authored by humans, representations that moreover have justified their use and abuse by humans.”38 Sport horses rather than cows are of course the central examples that appear throughout this book. They are un­ questionably anthropogenic: instruments of humans and by extension instruments through which human identity is shaped and negotiated. Yet if nonhuman animals will never be authors (or artists) per se of their own images in the conventional sense, one must ask how it may be possible to render them visible without fixing or es­ sentializing their meanings.39 A related question extends to representations of ani­ mals and human beings, whose agency in their representation may be compromised by circumstances of intrahuman (and sometimes interspecies) discrimination, erasure, and violence. In her provocative book Afro-Dog, which revolves around the weap­ onization of dogs against Blacks in the Americas, Bénédicte Boisseron warns of analogizing the Black condition to the animal—the human and animal chattel slavery analogy—to focus on how entanglements between Blacks and animals, and Blackness and animality, express defiance and empowerment.40 This book takes up such mat­ ters of visibility and interspecies entanglements to approach human and animal subjectivities on interconnected, if not comparable, terms.

Notes 1 Richard T. McLean, oral history interview, conducted by Jason Steiber, September 20, 2009, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. 2 Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik, “Introduction—Women, Men, and Horses: Looking at the Equestrian World Through a ‘Gender Lens’,” in Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding around the World, eds. Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 1–14. 3 Ibid., 8. 4 Kenneth Cohen, “Well Calculated for the Farmer,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 115, no. 3 (2007): 370–411.

12 Introduction 5 Melvin L. Adelman, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820–1870 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 60–63. 6 Adelman and Knijnik also discuss mobility opportunities for those with talent, drive, and good fortune—for example, in horseracing where a stable lad rises to the position of trainer. Such transformations in social mobility also extend to other disciplines. “Introduction,” 8. 7 Kendra Coulter, “Herds and Hierarchies: Class, Nature, and the Social Construction of Horses in Equestrian Culture,” Society and Animals 22 (2014): 149. 8 Alison Matthews David, “Elegant Amazons: Victorian Riding Habits and the Fashionable Horsewoman,” Victorian Literature and Culture 30, no. 1 (2002): 181. 9 Susan Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sport (New York: The Free Press, 1994). 10 David, “Elegant Amazons,” 181. 11 Lynda Birke and Keri Brandt, “Mutual Corporality: Gender and Human/Horse Relationships,” Women’s studies International Forum 32 (2009): 190–91. 12 On this transformation, see especially Birgitta Plymoth’s essay, “We Have to Make Horse Riding More Masculine! On the Difference between Masculine Needs and Feminine Practices in the Context of Swedish Equestrian Sport,” in Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, eds. Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 149–64. 13 Katherine L. Dashper, “Beyond the Binary: Gender Integration in British Equestrian Sport,” in Gender and Equestrian Sport, 17–53; and Kendra Coulter, “Horse Power: Gender, Work, and Wealth in Canadian Show Jumping,” in Gender and Equestrian Sport, 165–81. 14 Birke and Brandt, “Mutual Corporality,” 192; and Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence, Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and Tame (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982). 15 Monica Mattfeld, Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017). 16 Kari Weil, “Men and Horses: Circus Studs, Sporting Males and the Performance of Purity in Fin-de-Siêcle France,” French Cultural Studies 17, no. 1 (February 2006): 99–100. 17 Kari Weil, “Purebreds and Amazons: Saying Things with Horses in Late-NineteenthCentury France,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 11, no. 1 (1999): 16. On racialization in the Thoroughbred breed, see also Richard Nash, “A Perfect Nicking Pattern,” HumAnimalia 10, no. 1 (Fall 2019): 27–43. On race and ethnicity in Quarter Horses, Arabians, and Paint horses, see John Borneman, “Race, Ethnicity, Species, Breed: Totemism and Horse-Breed Classification in America,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no. 1 (January 1988): 25–51. Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld’s edited volume, Horse Breeds and Human Society (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), also offers many useful essays examining the relationships between horse breeds and human identity. 18 Donna Landry, Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). 19 Natalie Corinne Hansen, “Embodied Communication: The Poetics and Politics of Riding,” in Sport, Animals, and Society, eds. James Gillett and Michelle Gilbert (New York: Routledge, 2014), 251–276. 20 Kim Marra, “Riding, Scarring, Knowing: A Queerly Embodied Performance Historiography,” Theatre Journal 64, no. 4 (December 2012): 491. 21 Malcolm Cormack, Country Pursuits: British, American, and French Sporting Art from the Mellon Collection in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007), 1–2. For Waterhouse’s quote, see Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse, Painting in Britain, 1530–1790 (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1953), 215. 22 None can be directly connected to finished paintings. Cormack, Country Pursuits, 353. 23 Alexander Mackay-Smith, Race Horses of America, 1832–1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye (Saratoga Springs, NY: National Museum of Racing, 1981); and John Hervey, Racing in America, 1665–1865, 2 vols. (New York: American Jockey Club, 1944). 24 Hervey, The American Trotter (New York: Coward-McCann, 1947).

Introduction

13

25 At Samford University Library’s Special Collections in Birmingham, AL. 26 Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 364, 369. 27 New research continues to evolve on Indigenous Native American horses that counters previously held assumptions that horses were first introduced to the Americas by the Spanish. Yvette Running Horse Collin, “The Relationship Between the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and the Horse: Deconstructing a Eurocentric Myth” (PhD diss., University of Alaska-Fairbanks, 2017). On the history of stock or cow horses, especially the American Quarter Horse, see Robert M. Denhardt, Quarter Horses: A Story of Two Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Denhardt, The Horse of the Americas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975); and Alexander Mackay-Smith, The Colonial Quarter Race Horse (Middleburg, VA: H. K. Groves, 1983). 28 Mary Lou Lecompte refers to the years 1919–1929 as rodeo’s “Golden Age.” Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993). 29 Jan Cleere, Never Don’t Pay Attention: The Life of Rodeo Photographer Louise L. Serpa (Guilford, CT: TwoDot, 2015). 30 Linda Rose Sanderson, “‘A Ringside Seat to Paradise’: Rodeo Cowgirls, The New Woman, and The Construction of a Usable Past” (PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 2006), 184. 31 Richard McLean, quoted in Dan Tooker, “Richard McLean [interview],” Art International 18 (September 1974): 41. 32 Mark Tansey, quoted Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions, by Arthur C. Danto (New York: Abrams, 1992), 132. 33 Arthur C. Danto, Beyond the Brillo Box (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 17. 34 Ibid., 29, 19–20. Danto’s view recall a wealth of philosophical writings on distinctions between nonhuman and human animals, for example, Martin Hedeigger’s description of the animal as “poor in world” and humans as “world forming”; Georgio Agamben’s theory of “bare life”; and Friederich Nietzche’s claim that animals live “unhistorically.” On these, see Kari Weil, Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now? (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 25, 29, 43. 35 Weil, Thinking Animals, 40. 36 Donna Haraway writes that people “polish an animal mirror to look for ourselves.” “Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic, Part II: The Past Is the Contested Zone: Human Nature and Theories of Production and Reproduction in Primate Behavior Studies,” Signs 4, no. 1 (Autumn 1978): 37. 37 Landry, Noble Brutes, 10. 38 Weil, Thinking Animals, 25. 39 Ibid. One approach to acknowledging the multiplicity of animal life and meaning is through terminology or language. Jacques Derrida uses the term animot, a rewriting of the French animaux (plural) to express the multiplicity of animal life without reducing it to unitary notion of “the animal,” and to identify the human dimension in describing and representing animals (mot meaning word or more broadly speech) as well as the wrongs (maux) inflicted on them in doing so. “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow),” in Animal Philosophy: Essential Readings in Continental Thought, eds. Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton (London: Continuum, 2004), 125–26. On Derrida’s use of animot, see Sarah Kay, “Before the Animot: Bêtise and the Zoological Machine in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries,” Yale French Studies 127 (2015): 34; and Bénédicte Boisseron, Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018), 68–69. 40 Boisseron, Afro-Dog.

Bibliography Adelman, Melvin L. A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820–1870. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

14 Introduction Adelman, Miriam and Jorge Knijnik. “Introduction: Women, Men, and Horses: Looking at the Equestrian World Through a ‘Gender Lens.’” In Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding around the World, edited by Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. 1–14. Birke, Lynda and Keri Brandt. “Mutual Corporality: Gender and Human/Horse Relationships.” Women’s studies International Forum 32 (2009): 189–197. Borneman, John. “Race, Ethnicity, Species, Breed: Totemism and Horse-Breed Classification in America,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 30, no. 1 (January 1988): 25–51. Boisseron, Bénédicte. Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. Cahn, Susan. Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sport. New York: The Free Press, 1994. Cleere, Jan. Never Don’t Pay Attention: The Life of Rodeo Photographer Louise L. Serpa. Guilford, CT: TwoDot, 2015. Cohen, Kenneth. “Well Calculated for the Farmer.” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 115, no. 3 (2007): 370–411. Collin, Yvette Running Horse. “The Relationship Between the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and the Horse: Deconstructing a Eurocentric Myth.” PhD diss., University of Alaska-Fairbanks, 2017. Cormack, Malcolm. Country Pursuits: British, American, and French Sporting Art from the Mellon Collection in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007. Coulter, Kendra. “Horse Power: Gender, Work, and Wealth in Canadian Show Jumping.” In Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, edited by Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. 165–181. Coulter, Kendra. “Herds and Hierarchies: Class, Nature, and the Social Construction of Horses in Equestrian Culture.” Society and Animals 22 (2014): 135–152. Danto, Arthur C. Beyond the Brillo Box. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Danto, Arthur C. Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions. New York: Abrams, 1992. Dashper, Katherine L. “Beyond the Binary: Gender Integration in British Equestrian Sport.” In Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, edited by Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. 17–53. David, Alison Matthews. “Elegant Amazons: Victorian Riding Habits and the Fashionable Horsewoman.” Victorian Literature and Culture 30, no. 1 (2002): 172–210. Denhardt, Robert M. The Horse of the Americas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975. Denhardt, Robert M. Quarter Horses: A Story of Two Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. Derrida, Jacques. “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow).” In Animal Philosophy: Essential Readings in Continental Thought, edited by Matthew Calarco and Peter Atterton. London: Continuum, 2004. 113–128. Guest, Kristen and Monica Mattfeld, eds. Horse Breeds and Human Society. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. Hansen, Natalie Corinne. “Embodied Communication: The Poetics and Politics of Riding.” In Sport, Animals, and Society, edited by James Gillett and Michelle Gilbert. New York: Routledge, 2014. 251–276. Haraway, Donna. “Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic, Part II: The Past Is the Contested Zone: Human Nature and Theories of Production and Reproduction in Primate Behavior Studies,” Signs 4, no. 1 (Autumn 1978): 37–60. Hervey, John. Racing in America, 1665-1865. 2 vols. New York: American Jockey Club, 1944. Hervey, John. The American Trotter. New York: Coward-McCann, 1947.

Introduction

15

Kay, Sarah. “Before the Animot: Bêtise and the Zoological Machine in Medieval Latin and French Bestiaries.” Yale French Studies 127 (2015): 34–51. Landry, Donna. Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Lawrence, Elizabeth Atwood. Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and Tame. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. Lecompte, Mary Lou. Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Mackay-Smith, Alexander. Race Horses of America, 1832-1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye. Saratoga Springs, NY: National Museum of Racing, 1981. Mackay-Smith, Alexander. The Colonial Quarter Race Horse. Middleburg, VA: H.K. Groves, 1983. Marra, Kim. “Riding, Scarring, Knowing: A Queerly Embodied Performance Historiography.” Theatre Journal 64, no. 4 (December 2012): 489–511. Mattfeld, Monica. Becoming Centaur: Eighteenth-Century Masculinity and English Horsemanship. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017. McLean, Richard T. Oral history interview. Conducted by Jason Steiber. Washington, D.C.: Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, September 20, 2009. Nash, Richard. “A Perfect Nicking Pattern,” HumAnimalia 10, no. 1 (Fall 2019): 27–43. Plymoth, Birgitta. “We Have to Make Horse Riding More Masculine! On the Difference be­ tween Masculine Needs and Feminine Practices in the Context of Swedish Equestrian Sport.” In Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, edited by Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. 149–164. Sanderson, Linda Rose. “‘A Ringside Seat to Paradise’: Rodeo Cowgirls, The New Woman, and The Construction of a Usable Past.” PhD diss., University of California-Davis, 2006. Tooker, Dan. “Richard McLean [interview].” Art International 18 (September 1974): 40–41. Waterhouse, Ellis Kirkham. Painting in Britain, 1530-1790. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1953. Weil, Kari. “Purebreds and Amazons: Saying Things with Horses in Late-Nineteenth-Century France.” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 11, no. 1 (1999): 1–37. Weil, Kari. “Men and Horses: Circus Studs, Sporting Males and the Performance of Purity in Fin-de-Siêcle France.” French Cultural Studies 17, no. 1 (February 2006): 87–105. Weil, Kari. Thinking Animals: Why Animal Studies Now? New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

1

Interspecies Entanglements in Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

In 1833, the Swiss-born artist Edward Troye (1808–1874) created one of his most striking portraits, of the Thoroughbred racehorse Tobaconnist with jockey Ben and trainer Manuel for Virginia politician and turf man John Minor Botts (Tobacconist, with Botts’ Manuel and Botts’ Ben; figure 1.1). Troye composed the dark bay horse against a backdrop of leafy foliage and framed him with nearly barren tree trunks. Ben holds his reins and Manuel bends over to raise the saddle onto his back. Tobacconist responds by angrily pinning his ears and raising his tail, but Ben and Manuel are nonplussed. They are used to sensitive blooded horses just like the many other enslaved Black men who oversaw all manner of Thoroughbreds’ lives across the antebellum South, the epicenter of American racing, up until the Civil War. The year before, Troye had painted another enslaved hostler, Charles Stewart, with the grey Thoroughbred Medley (Medley and Groom, 1832; figure 1.2) at John Charles Craig’s Pennsylvania stud farm Carleton. Craig invited Troye to Carleton that summer after seeing Troye’s animal paintings in the spring Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Exhibition.1 In Troye’s portrait of Medley, Stewart, elegantly dressed in the vest and trousers worn regularly by trainers rather than grooms, holds the spotless, nearly white horse, a barn in the background. Stewart had walked the stallion all the way to Pennsylvania from Virginia to breed with Craig’s mares.2 Troye’s paintings of the Thoroughbreds Tobacconist and Medley with trainers and jockeys follow English models. But in adapting his paintings to suit his American context, the artist substituted enslaved Black American horsemen for the professional jockeys and servants traditionally pictured with English horses. These depictions not only provide an important visual record of those instrumental to the development of American Thoroughbred horseracing in the American South, but also reveal how American Thoroughbreds served for these men as tools of constraint, prestige, and mobility within horseracing’s schema of power and privilege under slavery. Troye’s paintings of Thoroughbreds and Black horsemen are thus conflicting, ultimately unresolvable images that at the same time distinguish their subjects and reinforce antebellum America’s deeply entrenched racial order. Troye documented nearly every distinguished American racehorse over the course of his career. His paintings adorned homes and stables and were disseminated widely as engravings in the era’s main sporting journals: The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine and Spirit of the Times: A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage.3 Born in 1808 to a French Protestant artist family, Troye spent his early years in England training as an animalier, an artist specializing in the realistic representation of animals. He came to Philadelphia by way of Jamaica DOI: 10.4324/9781351034340-2

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

17

Figure 1.1 Edward Troye, Tobacconist, with Botts’ Manuel and Botts’ Ben. 1833. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: Katherine Wetzel © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Figure 1.2 Edward Troye, Medley and Groom. 1832. Oil on canvas. Private collection. From Genevieve Baird Lacer, Edward Troye: Painter of Thoroughbred Stories (Prospect, KY: Harmony House, 2006), 157.

18 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits in 1831. Upon his arrival, he soon found a niche in the country’s growing market for animal portraiture. Southerners, active in the Thoroughbred racing and breeding centers that developed first in Virginia and the Carolinas and later spread to Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Deep South, became his main patrons. When he wasn’t traveling for commissions, Troye also made his home in the South. He went first to Kentucky to try his hand at farming, then to Alabama to teach at Spring Hill Academy in Mobile. Towards the end of his life, he settled in Madison County, in northern Alabama, but continued to keep a studio at Blue Grass Park, his close friend and patron Alexander Keene Richards’s farm in Kentucky. Troye died there in 1874.4 For Troye’s white, wealthy patrons, his equine pictures served dual purposes. They satisfied genteel desires for images of prized animals and loyal help like those created for Old World sporting aristocrats to glorify the owners of exceptional equines and validate their participation in an elite pastime known as the “sport of kings.” From the early eighteenth century forward, sporting art became a powerful material means of uniting horseflesh and (white) human privilege. Troye’s pictures, however, also provided visual evidence of a horse’s appearance, one form of data in a growing, multifaceted record-keeping in­ itiative that with pedigree books, race reports, and jockey club minutes served to le­ gitimate the bonafide, blooded American Thoroughbred.5 Troye’s reputation as a sporting artist has shaped much of the scholarship on him by sporting enthusiasts and historians like Harry Worcester Smith, Alexander Mackay-Smith, and Genevieve Baird Lacer. Smith wrote about and organized the first exhibitions of Troye’s art during the 1920s and 1930s.6 Mackay-Smith’s exhaustive research resulted in his indispensable 1981 publication, the Race Horses of America, 1832–1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye, which traces the artist’s career by methodically identifying Troye’s equine subjects and human patrons. And Baird’s Edward Troye: Painter of Thoroughbred Stories (2006) collects together Troye’s engravings for the American Turf Register to offer a glimpse of how they operated within the nineteenth-century sporting press. More recently, scholars have drawn attention to Troye’s portrayals of Black American horsemen. Katherine C. Mooney interprets Troye’s paintings as transparent illustrations of his patrons’ pri­ vileged worldview of racial harmony: idylls of fast, blooded horses maintained by skilled enslaved laborers.7 Pellom McDaniels III describes Troye as an “accidental historian” who, through his paintings, gave visual form to those men central to ra­ cing’s early development and conveyed a sense of their humanity “beyond the canvas.”8 And elsewhere I have advocated for understanding Troye’s paintings as first, multivalent portraits of both animals and enslaved persons, and second, as vi­ sual depictions of human-animal relationships wherein human and equine identities are shaped by one another.9 It is on this latter idea that this chapter turns to more fully examine Troye’s paintings as representations of interspecies entanglements and as the products of spaces—the plantation, racetrack, and stables—where, ultimately, animal and human biopower were constituted and employed by and for different factions.

Troye and English Models Troye tackled many compositional types during his career including horses alone, broodmares with foals, attendants holding horses, jockeys astride, and multi-figure human and horse combinations. His multi-figure paintings featuring enslaved

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

19

Figure 1.3 Edward Troye, Trifle. 1832. Oil on canvas. Collection of Kirk and Palmer Ragsdale, Rockwall, Texas. From Genevieve Baird Lacer, Edward Troye: Painter of Thoroughbred Stories (Prospect, KY: Harmony House, 2006), 157.

trainers, jockeys, and grooms with horses date primarily to the first decade of his career, between the years 1832 and 1840. These include Medley and Groom and Tobacconist, in addition to Trifle (1832; figure 1.3), a portrait of a chestnut mare with Black trainer William Alexander and Irish jockey Willis; Richard Singleton with “Viley’s Harry, Charles and Lew” (1834; figure 1.4), a portrait of a bay horse with Black trainer Harry Lewis, groom Charles, and jockey Lew created for Kentuckian Willa Viley; and Sir Bertrand with a Groom (1834-35; Yale University Art Gallery), another portrait of a bay horse and an anonymous Black trainer created for South Carolinian James Spann. Of these multi-figure paintings, some have known patrons who likely determined their subject matter, such as Tobacconist, one of four equine portraits created for Botts in 1833. Botts had his horse painted because Tobacconist had accrued an im­ pressive record, for example, winning the prestigious New Market plate in a race the previous fall. The jockey Ben appears with him, according to Mackay-Smith, because he was Botts’s favorite.10 Viley likely similarly requested that Troye include Harry Lewis, a notable trainer, with his racehorse Richard Singleton (named after a South Carolina planter and turf man). James Burchell Richardson, the former governor of South Carolina, commissioned Sir Bertrand with Groom for his son-in-law, Spann, who had sold the horse seven years earlier. That Richardson was in the midst of dispersing his bloodstock suggests the painting was meant to commemorate his fa­ mily’s prior racing and breeding ventures, signified by both the horse and the un­ named man, misidentified as a groom in the painting’s title, but who is clearly a trainer, evidenced by his beaver top hat, white shirt, vest, trousers, and dark waistcoat—the trainer’s formal race regalia. To paint Bertrand, Troye traveled to Kentucky, taking with him a sketch of the trainer to include in his finished portrait.11

20 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

Figure 1.4 Edward Troye, Richard Singleton with “Viley’s Harry, Charles and Lew.” 1834. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: Katherine Wetzel. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

The murkier patronage of other horse–horseman portraits makes it harder to de­ termine why Troye included the subjects he did. For instance, it is unclear whether Troye painted Medley and Groom for Craig, at whose farm the horse stood, or for Medley’s owner, Virginia turf man William Ransom Johnson. Trifle, a portrait of the chestnut mare Trifle with red-haired Irish jockey Willis seated astride, and en­ slaved Black trainer Alexander and an anonymous groom (painted the same summer as Medley and Groom at Craig’s farm) may have been created for the horse’s owners, as an advertisement to showcase Troye’s skills, or as some combination of both. That it was found in Troye’s studio after he died suggests it may be a copy of a com­ missioned portrait the artist kept as an example of his abilities. But the horse’s convoluted network of proprietorship also makes determining the commissioned portrait’s patronage difficult. Craig had recently purchased Trifle from Virginian J. Miles Selden at a Virginia racecourse where Craig’s sometime partner, Johnson, kept a training stable. Standing only fourteen and three-quarters hands tall, Trifle won an astounding twenty races out of twenty-four starts in her four-year career, the majority at four-mile heats. Willis’s blue silks denote Johnson’s racing colors.12 Selden often served as Johnson’s deputy, when Johnson could not be present at a race. Selden enslaved Alexander, the costumed trainer. Alexander would have traveled with Trifle to Carleton, where the horse had gone to rest after the spring racing season. Reliable enslaved hostlers like Stewart and Alexander held privileges to cross state lines. Therefore, it is likely that Craig owned the horse, but raced her under Johnson’s colors and kept her at Selden’s stables where Alexander trained. Troye’s portrait of Trifle thus portrays a horse owned by a northern patron, ridden by an Irish jockey, and trained by an enslaved Black southern trainer, articulating the complex industry connections between elite white owners and breeders, profit-seeking white turf men,

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

21

and paid and enslaved minority laborers who mixed at tracks and stables across the country. Though their patronage is at times uncertain, Troye’s multi-figure compositions assuredly emulate the sporting pictures of the best English sporting artists. George Stubbs, John Nost Sartorius, John Fernley, Sr., and Sir Edwin Landseer helped po­ pularize the outdoor “conversation piece” and developed iconographies of the hunt scene and racehorse portrait that included horses and owners as well as huntsmen, gamekeepers, and stableboys. Their images came to reflect contemporary English upper-class society: its Enlightenment views of nature and nature’s relationship to a moral and healthy body, its growing obsession with country sports and animal breeding, and the expansion of its country estates that necessitated increasingly specialized and stratified staff.13 Stubbs and Landseer can also be credited with transforming animal art from an “off-shoot of still life or portrait painting” into a more dramatic, charged, and respected genre.14 Troye knew Stubbs’s work from his training in England and may have utilized Stubbs’s Anatomy of the Horse (1766) to aid his own equine physiques. Troye’s first stateside exhibition included a copy of a Stubbs’s painting of a horse attacked by a lion. And he obviously drew on one of the English artist’s best-known settings for his portrait of Colonel John Crowell’s grey mare Bolivia (1836; Clark Art Institute): the chalky bluffs behind Bolivia conjure the limestone cliffs of England’s Creswell Craggs as much as the eastern Alabama countryside where Troye painted the horse.15 Troye’s paintings reveal a particularly strong debt to Stubbs in his portrayals of animals as individualized, expressive beings. Stephen F. Eisenman and Diana Donald have argued how Stubbs ushered in a new mode of equine portraiture through his depictions of animals with “names, unique comportments and attitudes” and who, like humans, “bear marks of weariness, anxiety, and loss.”16 These animated portrayals suggestive of an animal’s inner life diverged from the writings of eighteenth-century naturalists like Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who believed that animal behavior derived solely from instinct and habit; they also countered earlier, seventeenth-century Cartesian understandings of animals as soulless machines.17 Indeed, Horace Walpole chided René Descartes in his 1763 poem about Stubbs’s Lion Attacking a Horse (c. 1762; Yale Center for British Art). Of the startled horse with its “wild distended head,” Walpole asked, “Is that an engine? That a meer machine?”18 In Stubbs’s Hambletonian, Rubbing Down (1800; figure 1.5) the overwrought horse looks nothing like a mechanical apparatus, but palpably conveys his distress following a brutal, exhausting race, through his nervous movement, flattened ears, foaming open mouth, wide eye, and bulging neck muscles.19 Troye’s horses communicate similar feelings. Tobacconist’s body carriage suggests he is in a bad temper: he flattens his ears at the eminent tightening of the saddle’s girth and perhaps unpleasant race to come. Medley is alert with ears pricked forward in curiosity, seemingly proud of his lustrous grey coat and wearing, as the Turf Register described, a “self complacent expres­ sion.”20 The diminutive chestnut mare Trifle in contrast appears indifferent, her ears flickering slightly to catch the sound of her jockey’s voice. It is doubtful, however, that in Troye’s depictions of horses reacting to human actions, he intentionally attempted a radically new mode of picturing animals. Instead, he tried to impress patrons with skills on par with the English exemplars of equine artistry. Troye’s interest in portraying enslaved attending figures may too reflect his fa­ miliarity with English models, especially, predictably, Stubbs, who possessed a deep

22 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

Figure 1.5 George Stubbs, RA, Hambletonian, Rubbing Down. 1800. Oil on canvas. Mount Stewart, The Londonderry Collection (National Trust).

interest not only in animals, but in the English laboring class. Stubbs’s depictions of the laboring classes arose from his early career as a jobbing portraitist as well his contemporary artistic and literary milieu where the lives and visages of servants appeared in period plays, paintings, and novels. They are also indebted to the English’s increasingly scientific approach to breeding and bloodsports, characterized by interminable lists of bloodlines, game statistics, technical jargon, and other min­ utiae, that carried across to the precise documentation of estate servants, including descriptions of their habits and activities and records of their appearances. It even became fashionable to include servants’ names on painting labels, in titles, or in an accompanying key.21 Stubbs’s myriad depictions of hunt servants, gamekeepers, studgrooms, jockeys, stable-lad, tiger-boys, and farmworkers are neither patronized nor caricatured, but, according to Robin Blake, are “studied presences, about whose features, clothing, and posture the artist has taken minute care.”22 Hambletonian’s handlers exemplify such an individualizing approach: the slightly sweet expression of concern from the groom, his youth marked by a curling fringe of hair and dimpled chin, or the more sober form of the sturdy trainer, who calmly quiets the distraught creature. Even when Stubbs includes an unnamed Black groom in his portrait of George Keppel, Third Earle of Albemarle, and Henry Fox Shooting Over Pointers at Goodwood, with Four Servants in Attendance (1759–1760), perhaps as a colonialist impulse to lend a sense of the exotic, he portrays him in what scholars have described as a remarkably “unstereotyped” manner. Magnificently costumed in yellow- and red-trimmed livery, with glinting earring, he waits patiently for his gentleman to finish his shot and return to his steed.23

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

23

Troye similarly individualizes his enslaved Black horsemen, portraying them with distinctive facial features and dress. In some cases, he also taxonomizes them by naming them, although the use of “Botts’ Ben” and “Botts’ Manuel” in Tobacconist’s portrait does as much to sanction the authority of their enslaver as to identify them. Ben, dressed in blue jockey silks identifying the Botts stable colors24, is slight in stature, with a round face. Manuel, who wears the vest, shirt, and trousers of a trainer, possesses long sideburns. His light coloring marks his mixed race, possibly West Indian, ancestry. His facial hair sets off his high cheekbones and square jaw. In Trifle, the red-headed jockey Willis bears a ruddy complexion; his nose is long, almost too much so for his face. Trainer Alexander, in top hat and waistcoat, towers over little Trifle; he turns slightly to look at us with deep-set almond-shaped eyes, under a wide forehead and well-defined brows. Troye’s meticulous attention to jockeys’, trainers’, and grooms’ facial hair, skin color, stature, and attire appears consistent with his approach to animals, of whom we know he made preparatory studies from life.25 Mackay-Smith argues that al­ though Troye’s equines may often look formulaic, with full bodies, spindly legs, straight shoulders, and the signature “plumed waterspout tail,” the artist’s recording of animal markings, coloring, and anatomies are in fact remarkably trustworthy and consistent with those of antebellum Thoroughbreds.26 But whether Troye was truly able, as Edward Hotaling professes, to likewise portray his Black human subjects objectively and sympathetically “as they were”27 is questionable since Troye’s re­ presentations are circumscribed by the conditions and ideologies of enslavement and race. Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson remind us that “barriers to viewership” exist in seeing, understanding, and representing the enslaved when they seem to be “most plainly, even spectacularly, on display.”28 In Troye’s portrait of the horse Richard Singleton, the faces of trainer Lewis and groom Charles look rather alike, with dark complexions, wide noses, full lips, and large eyes set with Black pupils, supporting Frederick Douglass’s assertion in his 1849 essay on “Negro Portraits” in The Liberator that white artists could not help but distort and exaggerate Black features based on their engrained perception of Black physiognomy.29 The very fungibility of enslaved persons’ bodies made them “vulnerable to the projection of the others’ feelings, ideas, desires, and values.”30 Lewis’s and Charles’s expressions are nevertheless telling. Unlike Troye’s animal subjects who communicate curiosity, distress, and quietude through their physiques, gestures, and expressions to indicate the artist recognized, in the fashion of Stubbs, the “uniqueness and autonomy of animals”31, these men, along with Troye’s other human subjects—Manuel, Ben, and Alexander—confront us with looks that are strikingly blank. This is a key paradox of Troye’s canvases: the affirmation of horses’ subjectivities but denial of the same for their attending human figures.

The Multispecies Plantation Landscape Troye typically places his animal and human figures in the foreground of his pictures within a landscape setting, suggesting their relationship to nature. In Tobacconist, the animal stands against a backdrop of fall foliage framed by nearly barren tree trunks. Autumnal colors evoke late October in Virginia when Troye painted the horse. Troye’s leafless trees also balance the horse’s form, their sharp verticals anchoring a horizontal swathe of a glimmering, deep bay. Towering trees also align with human

24 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits figures in Medley and Groom and Trifle, mirroring the lines of handler Stewart’s right leg and jockey Willis’s back. Trifle, created during the summer rather than fall, uses lighter color combinations of sunny yellows, khakis, and pastel blues and greens for its landscape elements. In contrast, Medley and Groom portrays a darker summer scene—perhaps at dusk or dawn—with the horse and Stewart surrounded by a dense forest. Ian Finseth describes compositions of enslaved Blacks in natural settings as “racial landscapes,” which invite viewers to analyze racial meanings encoded in natural iconographies.32 Troye’s compositions complicate these meanings by also including animals. With industrious enslaved laborers tending animals amidst verdant settings, Troye’s compositions resemble plantation idylls, with horses and Black humans ex­ isting comfortably within nature. Here Stewart’s position and clothing complements Medley’s stance and coloring. Stewart stands gracefully at the horse’s head, the sinuous curve of his left arm balancing his right leg as he steps slightly forward, raising his hand to Medley’s bridle. His hair is longish, brushed back from his forehead, and he wears a thin mustache and goatee that emphasize his angular face. His reddish lips complement his skin tone and pick up the red brow band of Medley’s bridle. His white sleeves and collar match the horse’s color as well and provide balance to the bright white expanse of the animal’s body that fills so much of the picture. Stewart, however, cultivates Medley from a natural being—a wild or untrained horse—into a cultural or social being—a racehorse and breeding stallion—who thus also belongs to the world of the white barn that appears in the upper right of the canvas. In Tobacconist and Trifle, human figures do more than stand alongside their horses: they engage in productive activity. As Kirk Savage has argued, to depict en­ slaved persons performing skilled, meaningful work in visual imagery was proble­ matic to slaveholding audiences because it recognized creativity and intellect.33 However, because they train the horse for leisure and gambling—an activity usually off limits to enslaved persons—their work involves a “speculative economy whose rewards lie beyond their reach.”34 The fence, which Troye deploys as a compositional tool to draw attention to his main subjects, does more than separate those subjects from the landscape background, it also serves to isolate the hostlers, containing them within a socio-cultural realm apart from that of dominant white culture. Such pre­ carious positions, neither fully inside culture nor outside of nature, propel Troye’s human figures literally and metaphorically back towards the horses. Horses, and especially well-bred ones, occupied a privileged position in the animal kingdom during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries precisely because of their proximity to man as well as their unique capacity for domestication. This made them especially charged mediators between nature and culture.35 It is well-known that antebellum Americans made recurrent connections between the status of domestic animals and enslaved persons, for example, in how, under slavery, the term “stock” was often used to describe both livestock and people.36 By extension, as Philip D. Morgan has explained in his work on Jamaican stockpens and plantations, white attitudes toward animals shaped attitudes towards the enslaved. Yet whether harsh or compassionate, distanced or intimate, the implications for enslaved persons were generally negative.37 If he wasn’t before, Troye’s time in Jamaica surely acquainted him with such attitudes, which he then saw reproduced in the American South.

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

25

The nineteenth century also produced a flood of racist pseudoscience that used animal models (and developing evolutionary biology) to interpret and define human races. Early modern physiognomy and naturalism had long made correlations be­ tween animals and humans, as with artist Charles LeBrun’s studies that drew ana­ logies between animal and human facial features. Robert Knox’s Races of Men (1850) used similar illustrations to show how the facial features of Africans related more closely to apes.38 Pro-slavery apologists weaponized such ideas in their ratio­ nalization of slavery, in, for example, the abhorrent Negro-Mania: Being an Examination of the Falsely Assumed Equality of the Various Races of Man (1851), which selectively employs political, naturalist, and scientific writings to validate polygenesis and profess the inferiority of Blacks by linking them to animals.39 Narratives by formerly enslaved persons, however, also use animal metaphors to describe lives under bondage. Charles Ball, caught for cooking a stolen sheep, de­ scribes being hung from a post and beaten: “I felt my flesh quiver like that of animals that have been slaughtered by the butcher and are flayed whilst yet half alive.”40 Such examples, Mia Bay argues, reveal how the enslaved knew or cared little about con­ temporary ethnology or pseudoscience, but instead drew on the circumstances of domestic and barnyard animals with which they were familiar, emphasizing shared experiences, rather than physical or biological affinities.41 When enslaved and formerly enslaved persons described their relationship to horses, they usually meant workhorses. But because horses appeared everywhere, in agricultural fields, on open roads, in training stables, on racecourses, and in urban locales, they operated within the landscape of slavery in more varied ways. The en­ slaved became well attuned to the use of horses for policing fields and hunting es­ capees, the slaveholder on horseback visually commanding the landscape.42 A pack of bloodhounds normally accompanied this rider, another sign of how, Tyler D. Parry and Charlton W. Yingling note, slave societies operated by interspecies violence.43 Plantation owners often kept their own dogs or outsourced fugitive hunting to “negro catchers” and “slave dog” packs for hire, a horrific enterprise that proliferated after the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.44 In anti-slavery literature, the figure of the bloodhound, a dog with the ability to literally “tear the flesh from the bone,”45 proved especially powerful because it highlighted both slavery’s violence as well as enslaved persons’ desire for freedom.46 William Wells Brown, Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball, Solomon Northrup, and Frederick Douglass describe the terrors of being hunted as well as the pervasive fear produced by the dogs’ quotidian presence. The specific appearance and traits at­ tributed to the southern bloodhound also yoked American slavery to the broader, brutal practices of setter colonialism. Brown’s Clotel describes one plantation’s fer­ ocious pack as “part of a stock imported from Cuba,” kept in an iron cage, and fed on cornbread.47 And Northrup emphasizes the southern bloodhound’s savagery, far beyond anything known up North.48 “Cuban bloodhounds” differed from the more well-known, floppy-eared British breed known today. Trained to catch and kill, ra­ ther than scent, they resembled a large mastiff, Spanish Dogo, or bull terrier, with muscular body, squarish head, and cropped pointed ears. During the Second Seminole War, the US Federal and Florida territorial governments weaponized im­ ported Cuban dogs against Native Americans and their free and fugitive Black allies, based on the animals’ earlier successes in suppressing slave rebellions during the Second Maroon War in Jamaica and Haitian Revolution.49 In the West Indian

26 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits colonies, Cuban bloodhound mercenary forces, conscripted by the British and French, played central roles in carefully crafted regimes of terror waged physically and psychologically on maroons and enslaved Africans. Whether any actual Cuban bloodhounds existed in the USA during the antebellum period is questionable; however, it is clear that some dogs resembled the type: not foxhounds, but blood­ hounds, likely created by intermixing bulldog, terrier, mastiff, mongrel, and even perhaps some Cuban or Spanish stock.50 As a canine warrior specifically bred and trained to hunt and kill Black people, the antebellum bloodhound both embodied the violence of the present and invoked the specter of its bloody colonial past. The bloodhound, or “slave hound,” as it was often called, thus functioned as a tool of white supremacy. Its training to detect Blackness by smell, sight, and sound re­ inforced theories of racial difference; its pursuit and subjugation of Black bodies sustained racial hierarchies.51 Yet enslaved persons also kept dogs for hunting, protection, and companionship. Formerly enslaved Ball remembers his distress in having to abandon his faithful dog Trueman upon his escape.52 To own a dog was an assertion of one’s humanity.53 Consequently, whites often harmed enslaved persons’ dogs. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, George’s master stones and drowns his dog Carlo in front of him as a means of intimidation.54 Theories of racial inferiority increasingly infected the animals that came to be known as “Black dogs.” George Washington and Thomas Jefferson re­ corded purging “mongrel” “slave dogs” by shooting, poisoning, and hanging them as punishments for destroying livestock and, rather ironically, to prevent interbreeding with—or miscegenating—the masters’ spaniels, hounds, and terriers.55 Many southern states also went so far as to ban enslaved persons from owning dogs, an extension of forbidding the enslaved from owning property.56 The 1833 Alabama Slave Codes expressly prohibit ownership of not only dogs, but also horses.57 The example of dogs reveals how whites used animals as forms of biopower to manage societies of enslaved persons and to inculcate theories of racial difference. Thoroughbred racehorses were also harnessed as biopower in a racialized system in which Black labor served white interests in the accrual of economic capital and social status. But if generalized ideas of race came to be applied to dogs, creating distinc­ tions between white and Black ones, they tangled into a more byzantine web in the production of the pedigreed Thoroughbred.

Thorough-breds Thoroughbred racehorses and breeding stock were the most valuable of horses during the first half of the nineteenth century, already selling for thousands of dollars. A purebred, however, needed a proven pedigree, which delineated ancestry and fixed identity. Ann Norton Greene explains that before the nineteenth century, breed often meant a type of horse found in a geographical region or country. Thoroughbred breeders, however, looking to English models, had already begun to assert the value of pedigree, understood to mean an identifiable biological group, with horses des­ cended from a common sire and with specific hereditary traits.58 They tested various practices of crossing (mixing different breeds or stock), in-breeding (breeding related horses), line breeding (breeding horses in the same line of descent), and progeny testing (breeding horses that had been demonstrated to transmit superior qualities such as speed or endurance). But because Thoroughbred breeders “wanted to stop

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

27

change at the point at which a breed was considered pure,” they increasingly rejected progeny testing and “relied on pedigree to choose animal combinations.”59 Medley, Tobacconist, and Trifle, all tested, pedigreed racers, exemplified the contemporary American Thoroughbred. Each descended from Sir Archy: Medley, through his dam Reality’s sire line, and Tobacconist and Trifle through their immediate sire lines. Sir Archy, who became known as the Godolphin of America, is the celebrated son of Diomed, who descends from Matchem, one of the three foundation English stallions, with Herod and Eclipse, whose roots trace to the Godolphin Arabian, the Byerly Turk, and the Darley Arabian, the three middle-Eastern stallions whose blood crossed with light English stock mares to produce the first Thoroughbreds.60 Bloodline authority Patrick Nisbett Edgar heralded Americans’ success in produ­ cing the purest “race of blood-horses” in the country and fastest in the world, the result of “crossing the blood,” or “mixing the race.”61 His description reveals how period terminology often conflated breed and race, and how creolization theories operated differently across various human and animal populations. Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), repudiated Buffon’s theories of New World degeneracy by touting the advantages of creolization.62 But whereas enslaved, creolized Blacks remained stuck in an intractable inferior state, ascribed to a lack of capacity for genius—their nature—rather than a condition of bondage, Anglo Americans, exemplified by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and David Rittenhouse, thrived in the New World. So too did flora and fauna like the famous moose specimen Jefferson dispatched to France.63 The making of the American Thoroughbred followed these latter lines of thought. Though its Anglo equine ancestors included both Arab and English stock, a mixture of hot and cold blood, the American Thoroughbred came to be seen as a distinctly Anglo American production, a pure breed of horse comprised of English and American bloodlines cultivated in a New World environment, a fitting reflection of the white, elite men who owned, raced, bought, and sold them. It is perhaps ironic then that southern breeding programs, which involved often complex knowledge of pedigree and performance histories, rested largely in the hands of enslaved and free Blacks. Stewart, not William Ransom Johnson, handled the breeding of Medley, collecting money for his owner and doing the dirty work in the breeding shed. In the South Carolina stables of turf man and planter Richard Singleton, those tasks were performed by the enslaved trainer Cornelius. Indeed pedigree validity depended not only on the work itself, but also on the testimony of Blacks.64 Before the publication of the first official American Thoroughbred stud book in 1868, the sporting journals often functioned as de facto record keepers. Future Turf Register editor Allen Davie wrote to the magazine in 1833 to affirm the pedigree of Medley’s granddam because the “blood was so stated by Austin Curtis, (who purchased the mare for Mr. Johnson) and who, though a [freed] man of color, was one on whom all who knew him relied.”65 That those men, decried for their lack of intelligence, were trusted to oversee and produce valuable, pedigreed animals re­ veals the incongruities of the Thoroughbred that while thoroughly linked to white­ ness was literally produced by Blacks. Working with blooded Thoroughbreds often increased the social, economic, and physical mobility of the enslaved men pictured in Troye’s paintings. Stewart earned money through his work, some of which he was allowed to keep and which he used to purchase his own horses.66 He managed stables for both Johnson and his later

28 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits enslaver Alexander Porter and traveled across state lines to tracks and breeding farms with his charges.67 He and William Alexander, the trainer in Troye’s portrait of Trifle, also supervised and trained other enslaved hostlers as well as their equine charges.68 That those that rode and cared for Thoroughbreds merited a different standing from field or even house laborers is evident in the tradition at the Jackson family plantation and racing stables, the Forks of Cypress, in northern Alabama. There, during the stables’ zenith, enslaved Black jockeys reputedly received burials in the private, walled Jackson family cemetery, rather than the graveyard located in an open field nearby where the plantation’s other enslaved persons are interred.69 In rare instances, equestrian skills ostensibly carried enslaved horsemen out of bondage. Eastman Johnson’s A Ride for Liberty—the Fugitive Slaves (1862; Brooklyn Museum) portrays a family galloping to freedom across Union lines at Centreville, Virginia, an event supposedly witnessed by the artist.70 Parson Dick, a groom and later butler at the Forks of Cypress, whose distinctive portrait Troye painted along with several portraits of notable Forks’ Thoroughbreds, disappeared on a visit to his wife on a neighboring plantation near the end of the Civil War, riding, as “was his privilege,” his favorite mount, a Thoroughbred horse named Rubens.71 And the jockey Cato purportedly attained freedom by piloting Wagner to victory over Grey Eagle in a fa­ mous match race held at the Oakland racecourse in Louisville, Kentucky, in front of a crowd of ten thousand in 1839.72 Troye captured Wagner and Cato on canvas soon after the race, with Cato holding the horse, his saddle and blankets on the ground below, and the racecourse grandstand in the background (Wagner, 1839, National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame).73 Lewis, the trainer depicted in Troye’s portrait of Richard Singleton, purchased his freedom at some point with wages likely earned from training other turf men’s and his own leased horses, but continued to work for his prior enslaver Viley for a salary of five hundred dollars a year.74 More often, however, a horseman’s skills and prestige instead ensured his continual enslavement. South Carolinian Wade Hampton II wrote to another South Carolina planter and racing man, Richard Singleton, for whom the horse in Troye’s painting is named, appealing to hire his slave trainer Cornelius.75 In another case, William Ransom Johnson was offered, but did not accept, five hundred and fifty dollars for his “boy Ben,” even without a guarantee of Ben’s health, and thirty-five hundred dollars for Medley’s hostler, Stewart.76 It was also common for grooms, jockeys, and trainers to be sold with the animals they tended and rode since prized Thoroughbreds ne­ cessitated familiar and knowledgeable handlers. The American Turf Register’s 1833 description of Medley, published alongside the engraving after Troye’s painting of Medley and Stewart, noted that although the engravers failed to do justice to Troye’s original, they successfully captured Medley’s buoyant bearing and content expression befitting a pampered animal.77 Medley, it seems, was used to being cossetted. His very nature ordained quality care, but so too did the fact that owners made sizable investments in horse flesh, which would “mean nothing if the animals were not well trained and ridden.”78 Young enslaved men often underwent lengthy apprenticeship programs to learn to train and ride Thoroughbreds, a process described by an American Turf Register advertisement: Worthy of Regard—William Alexander. A very judicious and worthy man, reared in the stables of Col. W. R. Johnson, and a first rate trainer, who finished

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

29

off the “Trifle” that won the Jockey Club purse at the Central Course [Baltimore], is now, as then, Mr. Selden’s trainer. A few likely boys (from ten to thirteen or fourteen years old) will be taken, and under him, thoroughly instructed in the art of training horses for the turf;—they being bound for seven years to the business. Even those who are not in the way of bringing horses on the turf would do well to embrace the offer; as they would be sure to get first-rate grooms. The knowledge of training the racehorse thoroughly well is at this time a profitable trade, few others adding as much to the value of a slave, or to productive capacity of a free laboring man.79 The anonymous groom in Trifle may very well have been one of those boys sent to learn the ropes from Alexander, his youthful education resembling the training program of his equine charges. In his autobiography, Jacob Stroyer, a hostler who grew up in the stables of Richard Singleton, the turf man who inspired Willa Viley’s horse’s name, offers a more telling account of “thorough” instruction in the “art of training horses for the turf.” Stroyer yearned to be a hostler after visiting the Singleton plantation barnyard with his father who took care of the horses and mules. The elder Singleton granted his wish, but he found that his “new occupation de­ manded a little more” than he cared for.80 Instructed by the whip, he learned to ride quickly. The Singleton head trainer, a white man named Boney Young, was especially cruel. Stroyer remembers: “I got many little floggings by the colored groom as the horse threw me a great many times, but the floggings I got from him were very feeble compared with those of the white man.”81 Jockeys too underwent vile forms of torture to reduce their weight, such as being starved and made to run long distances. Mackay-Smith describes a method used on Ben by his owner, John Minor Botts: sweating him by burying him in manure.82 Troye’s paintings elide the sweat, dirt, and blood—the ugly underpinnings of slavery and of horseracing—to oblige his patrons with rosy images of an “allegedly just, smooth-running system,” upholding the current racial order. But of course, both human and animal bodies in racing stables were shaped by violence. Blood from gashes made by whips and spurs flowed reg­ ularly in the stables and on the tracks. That Thoroughbreds were valued differently than work or saddle horses did not immunize them from cruelty and hardship. They were frequently run to exhaustion and injury in inhumane races of three to four heats at three to four miles each—twelve to sixteen miles a day. One of Trifle’s most fa­ mous races was her 1832 battle with Black Maria, a grueling five-heat race of twenty miles at the end of which she broke down.83 Henry William Herbert, writing under his sportsman pseudonym Frank Forester, questioned such distances’ efficacy: That such races test to the utmost the pluck, the endurance, and the powers of the blood-horse, is granted. That they must kill, at last, is certain. The question is this; Cannot a horse’s game, his endurance, and his speed be tested, short of destroying his physical ability ever to prove them more?84

Against Kinship Herbert’s objection to horse racing’s punishing programs was nevertheless unusual. Rarely do period accounts, either by observers, practitioners, or the racing press, acknowledge antebellum racehorses’ welfare. Racehorses would remain largely

30 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits insulated from animal activism until well into the twentieth century. Indeed animal welfare legislation was scant in the United States before Henry Bergh’s 1866 founding of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the ensuing legislation expanding regulations on horses’ and other livestock’s treatment, even though a growing emphasis on kindness to animals was already present amongst social reformers and evangelicals.85 State anti-cruelty statutes that did exist during the antebellum period focused not on an animal’s pain and suffering, but on the violation of property rights. They also linked animal cruelty to human morality.86 Abolitionist rhetoric was similarly concerned with the moral implications of animal abuse, where enslavers’ coincident brutalization of animals and humans symptomized their immorality. Natural history had long made parallels between human and animal slavery. In 1772, Oliver Goldsmith wrote that in changing the “very nature of do­ mestic animals by cultivation and care,” the domestic animal has become a slave.”87 Buffon too expressed that slavery disfigured nature leading to the degeneration of animals.88 Legal philosophers like Jeremy Bentham focused rather on comparable capacities for suffering89, ideas that also fortified antislavery arguments. Stubbs’s, and by imitation Troye’s, thinking, feeling animals become thus visual manifestations of period beliefs in the dissolution of “barriers of incomprehension between man and other species” and the “universality of suffering in nature.”90 Troye’s inclusion of humans, who, with their charges, labor in bondage at the behest of owners makes further evident their related, if not equivalent, circumstances. Theories of kinship between animals and enslaved humans suffuse British and American abolitionist and welfare tracts, particularly in children’s literature, where children were instructed to recognize suffering in their fellow creatures and to practice kindness towards them. In Cousin Ann’s Stories for Children (1849), human slavery is introduced through a tale of animal captivity, with little Howard keeping his pet squirrel in a cage. Realizing that “he should not like, A little slave to be,” Howard sets the squirrel free. The squirrel’s liberation is directly correlated with the inclusion of the condensed story of Henry Box Brown, who escaped slavery by mailing himself via wooden box from Virginia to Philadelphia.91 Another verse in the same book tells of Lucy, an enslaved Black girl, sold like a calf, “though she was as good as you.”92 Perhaps the most well-known text in which cruelty to animals and humans unites is Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), where, as previously mentioned, George’s master stones and drowns George’s dog. The benevolent Mrs. Bird, in contrast, protects animals, punishing her sons for stoning a kitten, and extends her sympathy to fugitives, those “poor, starving creatures,” who have been “abused and oppressed all their lives.”93 The problems inherent in texts that advocate for both the abolition of slavery and more humane practices towards both humans and animals is that animals and enslaved people are often used interchangeably or conflated in ways that “reinforce, rather than destroy racialist hierarchies.”94 Furthermore, readerviewers are meant to respond to animal subjects not through sameness or kinship, but despite difference. In so doing, the reader-viewer becomes a steward of the animal.95 Extending this stewardship back to enslaved humans invokes the same dehumanizing rhetoric professed by period paternalism. Black intellectuals challenged such concepts. Frederick Douglass begins his auto­ biography with the statement that he knows as little of his age as a horse.96 But even the horse, barnyard fowl, and dog, he says in his later speech, The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered (1854), know “the Negro is a MAN.”97 His focus

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

31

on men, Melissa Stein argues, illustrates the gendered nature of period ethnology that was written by men and directed to men, and even held that “race was more pro­ nounced in the bodies of men.”98 In his Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829), David Walker, the son of an enslaved father and free mother, asked of his predominantly Black male audience “Are we MEN!!—I ask you, O my brethren, are we MEN?”99 For formerly enslaved James Pennington, “No man is anything more than a man, and no man is less than a man.”100 It is to these avowals of Black manhood, and the predominantly male world of nineteenth-century horse racing101, that I connect Stewart’s memoir, “My Life As a Slave,” published in Harper’s Magazine in 1888. Told in Jim Crow-era dialogue to a descendent of his former enslavers and hence suffused with deferential language, it narrates his rise from exercise boy to jockey to trainer to stallion man in the stables of William Ransom Johnson. Throughout, Stewart continuously negotiates his mascu­ linity through relationships with animals and other humans. Stewart acknowledges his affection for the horses with whom he worked—“How I did love dem horses!” He also bestows on them anthropomorphic qualities—“It ‘peard like dey loved me too, an’ when dey turned der rainbow neck, all slick an’ shinin’ aroun’ sarchin’ fur me to come an’ give ‘em deir gallops, whew-e-e!.”102 Yet Stewart uses them as a means of distinguishing himself: they recognize in him a master, like the horse in Douglass’s address, who bears a Black man on his back, admitting his mastery and dominion. Animals also help Stewart advance in the social order above other enslaved Black and white stable workers; he describes how early in his career he became “boss” of four older and nine younger slaves, two “white trash” helpers, and a stable full of nags—including Medley. Traveling with the animals and making his own money made him “je’ as free an’ independent as any gen’leman en de land.”103 He even felt able to speak in front of white gentlemen, as he did in front of the Richmond courthouse when he asked Major Isham Puckett if he could purchase Puckett’s en­ slaved woman Betsey for his wife. That Stewart claims the right to speak publicly for himself about the topic of his wife’s purchase reveals the extent of slavery’s dehu­ manizing customs, even as it shows how Stewart’s conception of manhood circulated around his control, not only of the enslaved Black and free white hostlers and horses in his stables, but also of enslaved women. Stewart thus conforms to Black ethnology that focused on championing manhood, but also diverges from it in the way his own actions echo those qualities of aggression and domination associated with white men. Bay explains that white believers in Black inferiority often denounced Blacks for being cowardly, weak, and overemotional, and even white abolitionists celebrated Blacks’ virtues by lauding their affectionate natures, moral instinct, and insight— qualities associated with women.104 Black theorists also reverted to feminine char­ acteristics, contrasting Black morality, gentleness, and benevolence with white vio­ lence and avarice.105 Stewart’s benevolence is not apparent in his narrative. He is callous towards his first wife Betsey, purchased for $350 dollars to care for his household and bear children. Betsey cooked and cleaned for him without complaint, but she angered him because she lied—what about we don’t know but possibly the paternity of her three children—even after Stewart tried to persuade her to tell the truth by beating her with birch rods and hickory sticks. Stewart re-sold Betsey and her three children to Major Puckett for what he paid for her in order to buy a horse, astutely reasoning that Puckett is getting the bargain: four for the price of one. In Stewart’s original purchase

32 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits of Betsey, he similarly appealed to Puckett’s pocket, noting to the agent that the money would show returns in the children they could raise. Stewart’s abuse of Betsey indicates he thinks of her and the children as fungible. He also describes them in terminology he knows: that of horse breeding. Betsey “must ha’ come of a bad breed, an’ a colt is mos’ apt to take arter de dam, anyhow; I better git shet of de whole gang of ‘em, an’try a new cross.”106 Soon after he marries his second wife, Mary Jane Mallory, in Paris, Kentucky where he’d taken Medley and other horses. Following Mary Jane’s death, Stewart, by his own request, is sold to Louisiana judge and racing man Alexander Porter. It is on the Porter family plantation where he narrates his memoir to Annie Porter, Alexander’s descendant. In the end, although Stewart obtained a large house and the power to ring a bell at his whim to call the overseer and stable workers, he remained enslaved, passed down from Judge Porter to his brother following Porter’s death. That he never purchased his own freedom shows both how circumscribed was the privilege of caring for elite horses and how it sus­ tained the system of slavery.107

Troye’s Last Multi-figure Painting: The Undefeated Asteroid After his first decade in the United States, Troye moved away from multi-figure compositions of horses with enslaved Black hostlers to focus primarily on horses alone. On the occasion when he does include a Black man in a later equine portrait, it is usually as a jockey, such as in the portrait of Wagner, with Cato holding the horse, or Planet (1858; private collection), with Jesse sitting astride, to memorialize a sig­ nificant race. Although Cato’s name was more widely known because of extensive press coverage of the infamous Wagner-Grey Eagle match race, Jesse and Planet also earned many wins, with the exception of a hotly contested 1861 match against the horse Albine.108 Jesse rode for Virginian Thomas W. Doswell and his Bullfield plantation stables. Troye depicts him in Bullfield’s orange colors astride Planet, a horse out of Doswell’s beloved broodmare Nina. Troye rarely pictured jockeys as­ tride because, Mackay-Smith reasons, he lacked the technical skills.109 His first at­ tempt to do so was in Trifle, where Irish jockey Willis’s slack body looks as if he was “sitting on a horse for the first time.”110 With Jesse, Troye achieved more success. Jesse sits up straight atop the imposing chestnut horse, with both hands on the reins and a whip in his right hand. Troye may have shifted away from multi-figure paintings for commercial reasons. As his reputation grew, he garnered a steady stream of commissions from the sporting press for engravings of horses and jockeys and horses alone to illustrate race accounts and horse biographies. For private patrons, routine compositions of single horses in pastoral settings were also more affordable. Another reason, however, may lie in his multi-figure paintings’ idyllic visions of slavery. That Troye’s early paintings pro­ duced in the 1830s and 1840s represented mainly Black enslaved hostlers with horses indicates he catered to a growing market that comprised members of the southern slaveholding racing elite, who, like Botts, perhaps requested the inclusion of their enslaved trainers, grooms, and jockeys. Building his career in the 1830s, Troye was thrown into the world of racing. He often stayed in his southern patrons’ homes and assumed a fashionable artist persona in the tradition of his fellow English artists who became members of the sporting communities they imaged or companions to their squire patrons.111 Prior to his arrival in the United States, Troye traveled first to

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

33

Jamaica, and if his obituary is true, became acquainted with livestock and Blacks under bondage in his brief stint as an estate manager.112 His ensuing travels in the southern states where his chief patrons lived and raced their horses further famil­ iarized him with the system. While Troye’s views of slavery remain unknown113, his pictures of enslaved hostlers obliged his patrons with images of an allegedly just, smooth-running system.114 As debates about slavery seethed on the national stage, Troye may have become increasingly attentive to the reception of his paintings showing Black men with elite Thoroughbred horses in plantation arcadias. And, with the expansion of his audiences to include more and more national sporting press readers, it would prove prudent to avoid subject matter that might prove untenable in an increasingly volatile political landscape. It is only towards the end of his life, for his close friend and patron Robert Aitcheson (R.A.) Alexander, the owner of Woodburn Farm in Kentucky, that Troye again at­ tempts another complex horse-trainer-groom-jockey canvas like those from early in his career. In this painting, Troye depicts Asteroid with trainer Ansel Williamson, jockey Edward Brown, and an anonymous groom (The “Undefeated” Asteroid, with Ansel (His Trainer) and Brown Dick (Jockey), 1864; figure 1.6). Alexander considered Asteroid the best son of his great racehorse and stallion Lexington; the three-year-old won notable races in the fall of 1864. Ansel Williamson came to Woodburn that same year as an enslaved man after spells at Thornton Boykin Goldsby’s Summerfield in Dallas County, Alabama, where he trained the horse Brown Dick, and at Richards’s Blue Grass Park in Kentucky.115 Brown was born in 1850 in Fayette County, Kentucky and enslaved as a child in 1858 by Alexander. He reputedly started out as a stable boy but wound up as the stable’s best jockey.116 Williamson likely nicknamed Brown after his illustrious former charge because of Brown’s ability to run fast.117 Freed following the Civil War and reclaiming his given name, Brown continued riding for Woodburn, then moved to the stud farm of Daniel Swigert, on whose Kingfisher he won the 1870

Figure 1.6 Edward Troye, The “Undefeated” Asteroid, with Ansel (His Trainer) and Brown Dick (Jockey). 1864. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Paul Mellon Collection. Photo: Katherine Wetzel. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

34 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits Belmont Stakes. After briefly riding Standardbreds to steeplechase, Brown switched back to Thoroughbreds, this time conditioning them. In 1877, his Baden Baden pre­ vailed in the Kentucky Derby. Other horses he bought, developed, and later sold—Ben Brush, Spendthrift, and Monrovia—went on to capture Derbies, Belmonts, and the Kentucky Oaks.118 In addition to honoring Woodburn’s premier horse, trainer, and jockey, Troye’s painting should also be understood as the artist’s last gesture to the grand canvases of Stubbs, with Asteroid exemplifying both victorious racehorse and gallant Civil War hero. Troye’s relationship with Alexander, a long-term patron and friend, may have allowed a more ambitious and costly picture.119 Troye frequently stayed at Woodburn when working on commissions, sometimes so long that Woodburn’s manager once expressed he wished Troye would leave.120 Otherwise, Troye resided at Sunnyslope, the nearby farm of his wife’s niece.121 From the time Alexander inherited Woodburn, he grew it into a leading racing and stock farm, with Thoroughbreds and trotters, shorthorn cattle, Southdown sheep, and hogs. It would not be surprising if Woodburn’s skilled hostlers also ran the farm’s livestock operations. It is welldocumented that enslaved laborers participated in the Deep South and Texas live­ stock industries during the antebellum period, assuming roles as herders, drovers, and hands; the term cowboy likely derives from this milieu, when it was applied as a derogatory descriptor for enslaved Black cattle workers. Because horsemanship skills were often vital to livestock management, a Texas cattleman purchased Austin Simpson, an enslaved person who had trained race horses in Arkansas and Kentucky, to tend his herd.122 At Woodburn, Alexander implemented a new, more precise training system, known as clockwork, by which horses trained not against each other but against the clock. He was also credited as one of the first to segregate animals according to type and sex in different barns and pastures in order to insure the purity of bloodlines.123 R.A. Alexander and his brother, Alexander John (A.J.), who took over the farm after R.A.’s death in 1867, kept careful breeding records and staged annual bloodstock sales.124 They also scrupulously documented their animals vi­ sually, first in paintings by artists like Troye, and later in photographs.125 The events of the Civil War and what happened to Asteroid also likely influenced the final composition of the picture, which is signed and dated December 11, 1864. Behind the foreground figure group lie the distant barns and outbuildings of Woodburn along with four Confederate riders in the upper left along the horizon line. On October 22, Confederate guerrillas raided and confiscated Woodburn’s stock, including Asteroid. They may have targeted Woodburn because of Alexander’s Union support or simply because of its reputation as a major livestock and breeding farm. A week later, neighbor Warren Viley returned the horse after discovering and paying a ransom for him.126 One can speculate that Troye began the painting in mid-October following Asteroid’s racing triumphs, but was forced to stop work on it because of the horse’s abduction.127 Troye’s initial composition was likely inspired by Alvan Fisher’s portrait of North-South match race victor, American Eclipse (American Eclipse, 1822; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts). Both Troye’s and Fisher’s canvases depict horses held by grooms, accompanying trainers and jockeys, and backgrounds of fields and outbuildings. Troye’s portrait, however, reverses the direction the horse faces and replaces Fisher’s crouching groom occupied with a horse rug with jockey Brown kneeling to adjust his spur.

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

35

After Asteroid’s return to Woodburn, Troye finished his painting by adding the confederate riders for narrative purposes, transforming Asteroid into a double-scene or “time shift,” similar to Stubbs’s Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, with a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey (1765; Jockey Club). Stubbs’s painting depicts, in the left foreground, Gimcrack being rubbed down after a race, and in the right background, the race in which the horse just beat its three competitors by several lengths.128 In imaging Asteroid as both racehorse and booty, Troye heralds Asteroid’s victories, the picture’s original intent, but also his status as a war hero. He also more broadly describes and memorializes the conscription of horses, loss of bloodstock, and often tragic fates of animals during wartime. Following another raid, in which Woodburn horses fared less well, Alexander shipped his most important stock to Illinois and Ohio.129 Other Southerners, like Troye’s friend Richards, helped arm the Confederate cavalry with exceptionally pedigreed mounts.130 Throughout the war years, Union and Confederate troops conscripted thousands of other horses, parti­ cularly blooded Thoroughbreds; many perished in battles, as well as from disease and starvation.131 Brown’s pose also bears contemplation because of its resemblance to the aboli­ tionist emblem of the chained, kneeling enslaved man, even though Brown turns to look at the viewer (figure 1.7). This emblem could not have been unknown to Troye as it was the most widely circulated image of the antislavery movements in both

Figure 1.7 Slave Medallion. 1787–1788. Stoneware (jasperware). Collection of the Birmingham Museum of Art; Gift of Dwight and Lucille Beeson. Photo: Sean Pathasema.

36 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits Britain and the United States and the most successful through its iconography of supplication, meant to inspire sympathy.132 But that Troye intended the figure of Brown to be interpreted as such is rather unlikely given his adaptation of the earlier American Eclipse painting and the fact that he created it for a southern patron whose farm operated by enslaved labor. It is unclear whether Brown adjusts his spur as he readies to mount Asteroid before a race or after as the horse is unsaddled, rubbed down, and blanketed. His ambiguous gesture, however, mirrors his status. Earlier that year, Democrats had nominated George McClellan to run against Abraham Lincoln. Although McClellan opposed the abolition of slavery, his commitment to preserving the Union was less clear amidst the party’s desire for an immediate end to the conflict.133 Even after Lincoln’s election victory on November 8, would eman­ cipation eventually come for Brown, Williamson, and the unnamed groom, and if so, how would it transform not only their lives, but also the landscape of Woodburn? Such questions were of the utmost consequence to the painting’s private audiences: to the depicted men whose fates were in limbo, to an artist whose livelihood rested heavily on the patronage of Southerners and the horses they owned and raced, and to a patron and his family with conflicted allegiances to the Union, their neighbors, and state.134 Asteroid’s experiences could be said to bolster paternalistic pro-slavery ar­ guments about the disastrous consequences of emancipation for Blacks. Upon his capture, he was catapulted into a radically different environment, distanced from his cossetted world and transformed into an anonymous war horse. His return to the safety of the plantation saved him from this miserable existence, or worse, a painful death. No matter Troye’s intentions, his canvas nonetheless articulates deep-rooted anxieties about the Black subject after emancipation, with Brown’s representation operating as both a likeness and multivalent, though conflicted, political symbol. In the end, the Civil War radically altered the landscape of the American racing industry, with horses lost, southern racing men and horse owners financially ruined, and enslaved stable workers freed. Williamson eventually left Woodburn, but con­ tinued to work in southern stables. Brown also left Woodburn after it transitioned from a racing into a breeding enterprise. Though successful for many years, he died impoverished.135 Brown’s fate corresponds to that of the racing industry that saw the disappearance of Black riders and trainers. Racism and segregation marginalized many; their dwindling numbers also resulted from migration to urban centers, which took them away from the rural sites of many horse breeding and training operations. Anti-gambling legislation finally forced the ultimate downfall of the racing industry in 1908; its incipient return as an even more lucrative sport involving agents and bigger money—as we know it today—resulted in the near total erasure of Black riders.136 Some of the best known, most popular images of Blacks involved in racing and other equine sports emerged in this post-Civil War, transitional era, notably in Currier and Ives’s Darktown Comics. Throughout this series, Black characters ludicrously at­ tempt imitations of such aristocratic equine pastimes as racing and hunting. Produced from the mid-1870s to the early 1890s, the Darktown Comics symbolize how visual culture became an entrenched means and indispensable tool of repression in postReconstruction, Jim Crow America, and visually codified many of the stereotypes conceived on the minstrel stage and in other popular entertainments, as well as in literature and political rhetoric.137 This period likewise produced the lawn jockey, an ornament that saw its popularity grow during the twentieth century, especially after World War II with the rise of the suburban landscape.138 Troye’s figures offer

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

37

alternatives to those that inhabit Currier and Ives’s Darktown or haunt suburban doorsteps, providing visual records of those Black men whose expertise and labor built, sustained, and shaped antebellum Thoroughbred racing. Through his attempt to introduce his American patrons to a new mode of animal portraiture, Troye cre­ ated provocative, contradictory representations of Black human identity borne from the contexts of the plantation and its attendant spaces, where Black (and white) human bodies mingled with blooded Thoroughbred horses.

Coda During the 1960s, the artist Wadsworth Jarrell (b. 1929), a founding member of the Chicago Black arts collective AfriCobra, began painting jockeys. He would often go to Chicago’s Arlington and Hawthorne tracks to sketch. All of his subjects were white. Nearly two decades later he revisited the horseracing theme, his interest re­ newed by his discovery of the history of Black riders in the Kentucky Derby. His subsequent striated, acrylic paintings are explosions of color, form, and movement, influenced by AfriCobra’s emphases on vivid, “cool-ade” colors, Black American cultural identity, and African art.139 In the enormous triptych Mile and a Quarter #2 (1993; figure 1.8), nine dark-skinned jockeys thunder down the track, straight to­ wards the viewer. In another painting, trainer Edward Brown and jockey Isaac Murphy astride his mount make their way to the starting gate (Isaac and Brown Dick, 1981; Kentucky Derby Museum). Jarrell’s discovery of these nineteenthcentury Black horsemen makes clear the importance of Troye’s paintings that in­ scribed Cato’s, Jesse’s, Edward Brown’s, Ansel Williamson’s, Harry Lewis’s, Ben’s, and Manuel’s names and visages into history, well before the first running of the Kentucky Derby in 1875. Over the last century, few Black Americans have owned, trained or jockeyed Derby horses, an absence spotlighted on September 5, 2020, when the horse Necker Island, co-owned by Black American bloodstock agent Greg

Figure 1.8 Wadsworth Jarrell, Mile and a Quarter #2. 1993. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Wadsworth Jarrell. Photo: George Whitten.

38 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits Harbut and businessman Ray Daniels, ran for the roses, in an unusual Derby post­ poned for the first time because of the Covid-19 pandemic and held under the shadow of protests over Breonna Taylor’s fatal shooting by a Louisville police officer.140 The following year, in 2021, Kendrick Carmouche would become the third Black jockey (and second born in the United States) to ride a Derby contender since 1921.141

Notes 1 Alexander Mackay-Smith, Race Horses of America, 1832–1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye (Saratoga Springs, NY: National Museum of Racing, 1981), 6, 359; and Malcolm Cormack, Country Pursuits: British, American, and French Sporting Art from the Mellon Collection in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, exh. cat. (Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007), 295. 2 On Medley’s career, see “Medley,” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 4, no. 9 (May 1833): 438; Genevieve Baird Lacer, Edward Troye: Painter of Thoroughbred Stories (Prospect, KY: Harmony House Publishers, 2006), 42; and Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 10–13. 3 John Stuart Skinner started the monthly American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine in Baltimore in 1829. William T. Porter launched a New York-based rival, the weekly Spirit of the Times: A Chronicle the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage, in 1839. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 445. 4 For Troye’s biography, see “Death of Edward Troye,” Turf, Field and Farm, August 7, 1874, 100; “Sketch of Edward Troye and His Works,” unpublished manuscript from Van Shipp family, Harry Worcester Smith Papers, National Sporting Library, Middleburg, VA. Troye married Kentuckian Cornelia Ann Van de Graaf (1812–89) in 1839; Lacer, Edward Troye, 25–26; Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 123–27; and J. Winston Coleman, Jr., Edward Troye, Animal and Portrait Painter (Lexington, KY: Winburn Press, 1958), 32. 5 Before the publication of the first official Thoroughbred stud book in 1868, the sporting journals often functioned as de facto record keepers. On the history of the Jockey Club, see Melvin Adelman, “Quantification and Sport: The American Jockey Club, 1866–1867: A Collective Biography,” in Sport in America: New Historical Perspectives, ed. Donald Spivey (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), 51–71. On the history of the first American Thoroughbred stud book, published by Sanders D. Bruce, see William Spencer Vosburgh, Racing in America, 1866–1921 (New York: The Jockey Club, 1922), 46–47. 6 Harry Worcester Smith, “Edward Troye (1808–1874), Painter of American Blood Horses,” The Field, January 21, 1926, 96–98; Harry Worcester Smith, Catalogue of Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Edward Troye, 1808–1874 (New York: Newhouse Galleries, 1938); and Harry Worcester Smith, “The Best of These Was Troye,” The Spur, January 1939, 41, 47–48. On Smith’s often suspect acquisition of Troye’s paintings, see Charles Cort, “Edward Troye in Alabama,” Alabama Heritage 80 (Spring 2006): 18–24; and Cort, “Exploiting the Troye Legacy,” Alabama Heritage 80 (Spring 2006): 25. 7 Katherine C. Mooney, Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 48, 79. Mooney’s book builds on Edward Hotaling’s The Great Black Jockeys: The Lives and Times of the Men Who Dominated America’s First National Sport (New York: Prima Publishing, 1999), which first chronicled the history of Black jockeys. 8 Pellom McDaniels III, “An Accidental Historian in Antebellum America: Edward Troye, Thoroughbred Horses, and Representations of African American Manhood and Masculinity,” Ohio Valley History 15, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 21. 9 This chapter revises ideas presented in Jessica Dallow, “Antebellum Sports Illustrated: Representing African Americans in Edward Troye’s Equine Paintings,” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 12, no. 2 (Autumn 2013), https://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/ autumn13/dallow-on-edward-troye-s-equine-paintings; and Dallow, “Narratives of Race and Racehorses in Edward Troye’s Equine Paintings,” in Equestrian Cultures: Horses,

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24 25

26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

39

Human Society, and the Discourse of Modernity, eds. Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019), 110–27. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 29–31. Ibid., 32, 55–58. Ibid., 13–14, 61. For a record of Trifle’s races, see “Memoir of Trifle,” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 7, no. 4 (December 1835): 145–50. Matthew Craske, “In the Realm of Nature and Beasts,” in Below Stairs: 400 Years of Servants’ Portraits, eds. Giles Waterfield and Anne French, exh. cat. (London: National Portrait Gallery, 2003), 153–66. Alex Potts, “Natural Order and the Call of the Wild: The Politics of Picturing,” Oxford Art Journal 13, no. 1 (1990): 13. Margaret C. Conrads, American Painting and Sculpture at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute (Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 1990), 202. Stephen F. Eisenman, The Cry of Nature: Art and the Making of Animal Rights (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 110–11; and Diana Donald, Picturing Animals in Britain, 1750–1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 73. Donald, Picturing Animals, 73; and Eisenman, Cry of Nature, 111, 78. Horace Walpole, “On seeing the celebrated Startled horse, painted by the inimitable Mr Stubbs,” Public Advertiser, November 4, 1763, quoted in Donald, Picturing Animals, 73, and Eisenman, Cry of Nature, 113. Robin Blake, “Fieldwork: Stubbs and the Humbler Sort,” in Stubbs and the Horse, eds. Malcolm Warner and Robin Blake, exh. cat. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 89–90; and Judy Egerton, George Stubbs, Painter: Catalogue Raisonné (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 622–25. “Medley,” 437–38. Craske, “In the Realm,” 157. Blake, “Fieldwork,” 82. David Bindman and Helen Weston, “Court and City: Fantasies of Domination,” in vol. 3, pt. 3, Image of the Black in Western Art. From the “Age of Discovery” to the Age of Abolition: The Eighteenth Century, eds. David Bindman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Karen C. C. Dalton (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 130–32. Richmond Jockey Club, Records, 1824–1838, Mss4 R4153 a 1, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA. “Death of Edward Troye,” 100. Troye’s nephew wrote that “Mr. Troye’s [animal] por­ traits were painted true to life.” W. B. Fleming, Jr. [Troye’s nephew], “Sketch of Edward Troye and His Works,” unpublished manuscript, 1911, Alexander Mackay-Smith Papers, National Sporting Library, Middleburg, VA; and Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 366. And, of the horse Kentucky, a patron’s descendent remembered that he “was always led outside of his box in the open for Mr. Troye” to sketch. Letter from James H. McCreery to Harry Worcester Smith, August 31, 1926, Harry Worcester Smith Papers, National Sporting Library, Middleburg, VA. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 378, 366. Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 107. Huey Copeland and Krista Thompson, “Perpetual Returns: New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual,” Representations 113, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 2. Gwendolyn Dubois Shaw, Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century (Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of Art, Phillips Academy, 2006), 12. Sadiyah V. Hartman, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 21. Eisenman, Cry of Nature, 112. Ian Frederick Finseth, Shades of Green: Visions of Nature in the Literature of American Slavery, 1770–1860 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), 208–09. Kirk Savage, Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in Nineteenth-Century America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 43. Finseth, Shades of Green, 237. Ibid., 235–38; and Harriet Ritvo, The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 17–19.

40 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits 36 Karl Jacoby, “Slave by Nature? Domestic Animals and Human Slaves,” Slavery and Abolition 15, no. 1 (1994): 89–90. 37 Philip D. Morgan, “Slaves and Livestock in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: Vineyard Pen, 1750–1751,” The William and Mary Quarterly 52, no. 1 (January 1995): 76. 38 Melissa Stein, Measuring Manhood: Race and the Science of Masculinity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 50. 39 John Campbell, Negro-Mania: Being an Examination of the Falsely Assumed Equality of the Various Races of Man (Philadelphia: Campbell and Power, 1851). A review of NegroMania indicates how pro-slavery Southerners extended Campbell’s ideas in their claims about slavery’s beneficence: “The negro is a slave to the Caucasian for the same reason that the horse, the ox, and the ass are subject to him—because of natural, unalterable, and eternal inferiority.” J.T., Review of Negro-Mania, Southern Quarterly Review 5, no. 9 (January 1852): 174–75. 40 Charles Ball, Fifty Years in Chains: Or, the Life of an American Slave (New York: H. Dayton, 1859), 89, electronic ed., http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/ball/ball.html. 41 Mia Bay, The White Image in the Black Mind: African American Ideas about White People, 1830–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 118–19, 127–36. 42 Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 222. For Rhys Isaac’s discussion of the iconography of the slaveholder on horseback, see The Transformation of Virginia, 1740–1790 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 52–57. 43 Tyler D. Parry and Charlton W. Yingling, “Slavehounds and Abolition in the Americas,” Past and Present 246, no. 1 (February 2020): 71. 44 For bloodhound tracking advertisements see George Carleton, Suppressed Book about Slavery (1864; repr. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968), 326–27, 338–39. 45 Harriet A. Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself (Boston, 1861; Project Gutenberg, 2004), http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11030. 46 John Campbell, “The Seminoles, the ‘Bloodhound War,’ and Abolitionism, 1796–1865,” Journal of Southern History 72, no. 2 (May 2006): 260. 47 The character Carlton states, “They were of a species between the bloodhound and the foxhound, and were ferocious, gaunt, and savage-looking animals. They were part of a stock imported from Cuba, he informed me. They were kept in an iron cage, and fed on Indian corn bread. This kind of food, he said, made them eager for their business.” William Wells Brown, Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. By William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Author of “Three Years in Europe.” With a Sketch of the Author’s Life (London: Partridge & Oakey, 1853; Chapel Hill: Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004), 136, https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/brown/brown. html. 48 Solomon Northup, Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 (1853; Chapel Hill: Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997), 136–7, https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/northup. html. 49 For accounts of the dogs see Campbell, “The Seminoles,” 259–302; Sarah E. Johnson, “’You Should Give Them Blacks to Eat’: Waging Inter-American Wars of Torture and Terror,” American Quarterly 61, no. 1 (March 2009): 74-5; and Johnson, The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 35–6. 50 Frederick Law Olmsted mentions a farmer who specifically states that the dogs used by fugitive slave hunters were crosses of the Spanish bloodhound and common cur—not foxhounds, but bloodhounds. The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States: Based on the Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations by the Same Author (New York: Mason Brothers, 1861), 2:120. 51 Parry and Yingling, “Slave Hounds,” 75–76.

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

41

52 Charles Ball, Slavery in the United States. A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who Lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia, as a Slave Under Various Masters, and was One Year in the Navy with Commodore Barney, During the Late War (1837; Chapel Hill: Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999), 389–90, https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/ballslavery/ball.html. 53 John Campbell, “‘My Constant Companion’: Slaves and Their Dogs in the Antebellum South,” in Working toward Freedom: Slave Society and Domestic Economy in the American South, ed. Larry E. Hudson (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1994), 56–59. 54 On human-animal relationship in the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, see Brigette Fielder, “Black Dogs, Bloodhounds, and Best Friends: African Americans and Dogs in NineteenthCentury Abolitionist Literature,” in American Beasts: Perspectives on Animals, Animality, and U.S. Culture, 1776–1920, ed. Dominik Ohrem (Berlin: Neofelis Verlag GmbH, 2017), 153–173. 55 Katherine C. Grier, Pets in America: A History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 27; James S. Rush, “The Dogs of Mount Vernon: A Study of Canine Activities on Washington’s Plantation,” unpublished paper, Mount Vernon Ladies Association, undated, ca. 1996 [cited as no. 5, in Grier, 327]; John Ensminger, “The Dogs of George Washington and the Less Fortunate Ones of His Slaves” (self-pub., 2014), 1–15, https://www.academia.edu/19520501/The_Dogs_of_George_Washington_and_ the_Less_Fortunate_Ones_of_His_Slaves?; and Bronwyn Dickey, Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon (New York: Random House, 2016), 250–51. 56 Campbell, “‘My Constant Companion’,” 63–68; and Dickey, Pit Bull, 252. Besides property ownership, Parry and Yingling also provide another justification for crim­ inalizing dog ownership: that it constituted the possession of a weapon. “Slave Hounds,” 95. 57 John G. Aikin, Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama (Philadelphia: Alexander Towar, 1833), 394. 58 Ann Norton Greene, Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 85. 59 Ibid., 93, 84. 60 G.E. Conkey Co.,Conkey’s Stock Book; A Handy Reference Manual on Farm Animals (Cleveland, OH: G.E. Conkey Co., 1911), 69. 61 Patrick Nisbett Edgar, The American Race-Turf Register, Sportsman’s Herald, and General Stud Book: Containing the Pedigrees of the Most Celebrated Horses, Mares, and Geldings, That Have Distinguished Themselves as Racers on the American Turf (New York: Press of Henry Mason, 1833), 1:xi. 62 Kariann Akemi Yokota, Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 187. 63 Ibid., 187–88; and Ralph Bauer, “The Hemispheric Genealogies of ‘Race’: Creolization and the Cultural Geography of Colonial Difference across Eighteenth-Century Americas,” in Hemispheric American Studies, eds. Caroline S. Levander and Robert S. Levine (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 50–51. 64 Mooney, Race Horse Men, 41. 65 “Marmaduke Johnson’s Mare—Dam of Old Reality,” letter to the editor, American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 4, no. 10 (June 1833): 520; and Mooney, Race Horse Men, 1, 10–11. 66 Charles Stewart, “My Life as a Slave,” ed. Annie Porter, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 69 (October 1884): 735. 67 In 1843, Wade Hampton brought his best slave jockey Sandy to Nashville to ride in the Peyton Stakes. Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 139. 68 Stewart, “My Life,” 734–737; and Mooney, Race Horse Men, 40–42, 45. 69 Curtis Parker Flowers, Thoroughbred Horses at the Muscle Shoals (Florence, AL: printed by author, 2005), 1212n26.

42 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits 70 Patricia Hills, “Painting Race: Eastman Johnson’s Pictures of Slaves, Ex-Slaves, and Freedmen,” in Eastman Johnson: Painting America, eds. Teresa A. Carbone and Patricia Hills (Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1999), 136. 71 Flowers, Thoroughbred Horses at Muscle Shoals, 12; and Flowers, “Parson Dick: Groom of the Forks,” Alabama Heritage 80 (Spring 2006): 33. 72 William T. Porter, “Wagner and Grey Eagle’s Races,” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 11 (March 1840): 116–32; and Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 116–33. Porter notes that Cato “had become free at the time of the first race” (127). Hotaling clarifies that while legend holds that he won his freedom through his race vic­ tory, freedom would have been an unusual reward since winning made enslaved jockeys more valuable. They could however earn money through riding, and Cato may indeed have purchased his freedom (128). 73 Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 132. Engravings after Troye’s painting appeared in both Spirit of the Times (July 4, 1840) and the American Turf Register (July 1843). 74 Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 55. Mooney notes that Lewis may have been freed by 1853 by the time that Willa Viley became part of the syndicate that purchased the horse Darley, who would go on to be renamed Lexington and become one of the most important sires in Thoroughbred history. Darley’s prior owner, Elisha Warfield, had leased him to Lewis, who, as a Black man, could not legally enter a horse in a race at a southern track, and thus could make no decisions about the horse’s sale. Mooney, Race Horse Men, 91. That Viley and Lewis’s interests diverged over Lexington casts doubt on Mackay-Smith’s story about Viley’s benevolence toward Lewis. 75 Letter from Wade Hampton to Richard Singleton, August 1, 1834, Richard Singleton Papers, South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston, SC, quoted in Randy J. Sparks, “Gentleman’s Sport: Horse Racing in Antebellum Charleston,” South Carolina Historical Magazine 93, no. 1 (1992): 27. 76 Letter from Tucker R. Woodson to William Ransom Johnson, January 13, 1844, Johnson Papers, Mss1 J6398a1–4, Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA; and Stewart, “My Life,” 736. 77 “Medley,” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 4, no. 9 (May 1833): 437–38. 78 Sparks, “Gentleman’s Sport,” 27. 79 “Worthy of Regard,” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 3, no. 7 (March 1832): 358. 80 Jacob Stroyer, My Life in the South (Salem: Salem Observer Book and Job Print, 1885), 19. 81 Ibid., 24–25. 82 Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 31; and Mooney, Race Horse Men, 43. 83 Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 13–14; and “Union Course (N.Y.) Races,” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 4, no. 4 (December 1832): 201–205. 84 Henry William Herbert, Frank Forester’s Horse and Horsemanship of the United States and British Provinces of North America (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1857), 1:275. 85 Janet M. Davis, The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 29–39. 86 David Favre and Vivien Tsang, “The Development of the Anti-Cruelty Laws during the 1800s,” Detroit College of Law Review (1993), Animal Legal and Historical Center, Michigan College of Law, https://www.animallaw.info/article/development-anti-crueltylaws-during-1800s#N_27_. 87 Ingrid H. Tague, “Companions, Servants, or Slaves? Considering Animals in EighteenthCentury Britain,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 39 (2010): 112; and Oliver Goldsmith, introduction to A New and Accurate System of Natural History, by Richard Brookes, 2nd ed., 6 vols. (London: T. Carnan and F. Newbery, 1772), 1:xviii, quoted in Tague, 113. 88 Tague, “Companions,” 114. 89 Donald, Picturing Animals, 109, 223. 90 Ibid., 74. 91 Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780–1865 (New York: Routledge, 2000), 114–15.

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

43

92 “Tom and Lucy: A Tale for Little Lizzie,” Cousin Ann’s Stories, 17, quoted in Brigitte Fielder, “Animal Humanism: Race, Species, and Affective Kinship in Nineteenth-Century Abolitionism,” American Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2013): 493. 93 Davis, Gospel, 34, 42; and Fielder, “Animal Humanism,” 494. 94 Davis, Gospel, 42; and Fielder, “Animal Humanism,” 492. 95 Fielder, “Animal Humanism,” 501. 96 Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845), in The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, ed. William L. Andrews (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 39. 97 Frederick Douglass, The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered (Rochester, NY: Lee, Mann, and Co., 1854), 9. See Stein, Measuring, 61, for a discussion of these state­ ments by Douglass. 98 Stein, Measuring, 87. 99 David Walker, Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (1829), repr. “One Continual Cry”—David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the world: its Settings and Meanings, ed. Herbert Aptheker ( New York: Humanities Press, 1965), 68, quoted in Stein, Measuring, 59. 100 James W. C. Pennington, A Textbook of the Origin and History etc. of the Colored People (Hartford, CT: L. Skinner, 1841; reprint, Detroit: Negro History Press, 1969), 89, 46, quoted in Stein, Measuring, 60. 101 Women are absent from most accounts of nineteenth-century horse racing except as race spectators. Men generally bought, sold, trained, rode, and cared for racehorses. 102 Stewart, “My Life,” 732. 103 Ibid., 734–35. 104 Bay, White Image, 72. In an 1863 speech, Theodore Tilton, editor of the New York Independent, characterized the “negro” as the “feminine race of the world.” Tilton, quoted in Bay, 72. 105 Stein, Measuring, 63. 106 Stewart, “My Life,” 735. 107 Ibid., 737–38; Mooney, Race Horse Men, 53; and Johnson, River of Dark Dreams, 214. 108 Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 247; Mooney, Race Horse Men, 117–19; and Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 143. 109 Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 373–375; and Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 142. 110 Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 13. 111 Craske, “In the Realm,” 158. 112 John Davis and Mackay-Smith parse differently the meaning of Troye’s obituary state­ ment that he “had charge of” a sugar estate. For Davis it means overseer; for MackaySmith it means bookkeeper. John Davis, The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 134; and Mackay-Smith, handwritten notes, Mackay-Smith Papers, National Sporting Library, Middleburg, Virginia. 113 Troye’s best friends were Southern plantation owners, farmers, and turf men such as Keene Richards and Robert Aitcheson Alexander. He married a woman from Kentucky and made his home in Alabama. He was also, according to Mackay-Smith, an opponent of secession and a supporter of the Federal cause. 114 Mooney, Race Horse Men, 79. 115 Born into slavery, Williamson remain enslaved throughout his training career until the end of the Civil War. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 222–24; and “Ansel Williamson,” Hall of Fame, Trainers, National Museum of Racing, accessed October 31, 2021, https:// www.racingmuseum.org/hall-of-fame/trainer/ansel-williamson. Sources differ as to Williamson’s whereabouts as a free man after the Civil War. Mackay-Smith claims he stayed on at Woodburn until 1867 when he began working for Kentuckian Henry Price McGrath. William Preston Mangum II claims that Williamson returned in 1866 to Blue Grass Park where Richards had rebuilt his stable. Woodburn Farm payments to Williamson, however, indicate he was at Woodburn in 1868 and 1869. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 224; Mangum, A Kingdom for the Horse: The Legacy of R.A. Alexander and Woodburn Farms (Louisville: Harmony House, 1999), 115; and Woodburn Farm

44 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

116 117

118 119 120 121 122

123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138

Collection/Robert Aitcheson Alexander Papers, Box 23, Folder 1, Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, Kentucky. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 223–24; Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 187, 211; Merlene Davis, “Ex-Slave Ruled the World,” Lexington Herald-Leader, April 30, 2006. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 222–24; and Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 187. While one may be inclined to interpret Edward Brown’s nickname as sexualized, “dick” as a slang term for penis doesn’t appear to come into regular use until the late nineteenth century. The Oxford English Dictionary notes its first use in that context in 1890, although that doesn’t mean it wasn’t used prior. An 1864 slang dictionary defines “dick” as a riding whip (John Camden Hotten, The Slang Dictionary: Or, the Vulgar Words, Street Phrases, and “Fast” Expressions of High and Low Society: Many with Their Etymology, and a Few with Their History Traced). That may thus be a more logical interpretation of the nickname, with “Brown Dick” connoting a Black jockey or person who functions like or uses a whip, as well as the horse of the same name. Oxford English Dictionary Online, s.v. “Dick”, accessed August 3, 2020, https://www-oed-com.ezproxy3.lhl.uab.edu/view/ Entry/52255?rskey=33GfiS&result=1#eid. Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 211, 332–33; and Samuel W. Thomas, Churchill Downs: A Documentary History of America’s Most Legendary Race Track (Louisville: Kentucky Derby Museum, 1995), 120. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 202, 222–23; and John Hervey, Racing in America, 1665–1865 (New York: The Jockey Club, 1944), 2:347. Jonelle Fisher, For All Times: The Story of Lucas Brodhead (Lexington, KY: St. Crispian Press, 2002), 44. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 88. Deborah M. Liles, “Before Emancipation: Black Cowboys and the Livestock Industry,” in Black Cowboys in the American West: On the Range, on the Stage, behind the Badge, ed. Bruce A. Glasrud and Michael N. Searles (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press), 20–23. Dennis Domer, “Inventing the Horse Farm,” Kentucky Humanities (October 2005): 3–12. Mangum, Kingdom, 21–43, 129–83. Woodburn’s horses were photographed by the Philadelphia firm Schreiber & Sons, dis­ cussed in chapter 2 of this book. Hervey, Racing in America, 2:316; and Schreiber & Sons, Portraits of Noted Horses of America (Philadelphia, 1874). Mangum, Kingdom, 54–57. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 223; and Cormack, Country Pursuits, 329. Blake, “Fieldwork,” 55–56. Some perished, others were lost. Mangum, Kingdom, 85–101. Mangum, Kingdom, 43. Sparks, “Gentleman’s Sport,” 29; and Gene C. Armistead, Horses and Mules in the Civil War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013). Savage, Standing Soldiers, 21–23. Peter H. Wood, Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer’s Civil War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 65–68. This painting hung in the stables, evidenced by visitor’s accounts published in the October 16, 1874 and July 9, 1880 issues of Turf, Field and Farm. Fisher, For All Times, 73, 105. Thomas, Churchill Downs, 47. Hotaling, Great Black Jockeys, 323–32. Bryan F. Le Beau, “African Americans in Currier and Ives’s America: The Darktown Series,” Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 23, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 71–83. Legend has it that the “Jocko” statue, which originally depicted a groom wearing ev­ eryday clothing rather than jockey silks, was used on the underground railroad: a lit lantern meant safe, a dark one meant danger. Kenneth W. Goings, Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black Collectibles and American Stereotyping (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 52. Most scholars agree, however, that this is little more than legend, as the lawn jockey statue did not gain currency until the twentieth century. John Strausbaugh, Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Imitation and Insult in American Popular Culture (New York: Penguin, 2007), 282.

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

45

139 Victoria L. Valentine, “Known for His Revolutionary Black Power Images, Wadsworth Jarrell Started Painting Horseracing Scenes in the 1960s,” Culture Type, May 10, 2018, https://www.culturetype.com/2018/05/10/known-for-his-revolutionary-Black-powerimages-wadsworth-jarrell-started-painting-horse-race-scenes-in-the-1960s/; and Robert L. Douglas, Wadsworth Jarrell: The Artist As Revolutionary (San Francisco: Pomegranate Books, 1996), 7–9, 58–61. For Jarrell’s horseracing paintings, see Wadsworth Jarrell and Robert L. Douglas, Edge Cutters: Paintings (Louisville: Kentucky Derby Museum, 1993). On AfriCobra’s principles, see Wadsworth Jarrell, AFRICOBRA: Experimental Art to­ ward a School of Thought (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020), xvii–xiv. 140 Joe Drape, “Pull Out of the Kentucky Derby? Pressure on a Black Owner Mounts,” New York Times, September 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/sports/horseracing/kentucky-derby-breonna-taylor-harbut.html. 141 Chris Bengel, “2021 Kentucky Derby: Kendrick Carmouche Will Be First Black Jockey in Race since 2013,” CBS Sports, April 28, 2021, https://www.cbssports.com/general/news/ 2021-kentucky-derby-kendrick-carmouche-will-be-first-black-jockey-in-race-since-2013/.

Bibliography Adelman, Melvin. “Quantification and Sport: The American Jockey Club, 1866–1867: A Collective Biography.” In Sport in America: New Historical Perspectives, edited by Donald Spivey. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985. 51–71. Aikin, John G. Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama Philadelphia: Alexander Towar, 1833. Armistead, Gene C. Horses and Mules in the Civil War. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2013. Ball, Charles. Fifty Years in Chains: Or, the Life of an American Slave. New York: H. Dayton, 1859. http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/ball/ball.html. Ball, Charles. Slavery in the United States. A Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Charles Ball, a Black Man, Who Lived Forty Years in Maryland, South Carolina and Georgia, as a Slave Under Various Masters, and was One Year in the Navy with Commodore Barney, During the Late War. 1837. Chapel Hill: Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999. https://docsouth.unc.edu/ neh/ballslavery/ball.html. Bauer, Ralph. “The Hemispheric Genealogies of ‘Race’: Creolization and the Cultural Geography of Colonial Difference across Eighteenth-Century Americas.” In Hemispheric American Studies, edited by Caroline S. Levander and Robert S. Levine. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008. Bay, Mia. The White Image in the Black Mind: African American Ideas about White People, 1830–1925. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Bengel, Chris. “2021 Kentucky Derby: Kendrick Carmouche Will Be First Black Jockey in Race since 2013.” CBS Sports. April 28, 2021. https://www.cbssports.com/general/news/2021kentucky-derby-kendrick-carmouche-will-be-first-black-jockey-in-race-since-2013/. Bindman, David and Helen Weston. “Court and City: Fantasies of Domination.” In vol. 3, pt. 3, Image of the Black in Western Art. From the “Age of Discovery” to the Age of Abolition: The Eighteenth Century, edited by David Bindman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Karen C. C. Dalton. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011. 125–170. Blake, Robin. “Fieldwork: Stubbs and the Humbler Sort,” In Stubbs and the Horse, edited by Malcolm Warner and Robin Blake. Exh. cat. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 81–99. Brown, William Wells. Clotel; or, The President’s Daughter: A Narrative of Slave Life in the United States. By William Wells Brown, A Fugitive Slave, Author of “Three Years in Europe.” With a Sketch of the Author’s Life. London: Partridge & Oakey, 1853. Chapel Hill: Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2004. https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/brown/brown.html.

46 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits Campbell, John. Negro-Mania: Being an Examination of the Falsely Assumed Equality of the Various Races of Man. Philadelphia: Campbell and Power, 1851. Campbell, John. “‘My Constant Companion’: Slaves and Their Dogs in the Antebellum South.” In Working toward Freedom: Slave Society and Domestic Economy in the American South, edited by Larry E. Hudson. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1994. 53–76. Campbell, John. “The Seminoles, the ‘Bloodhound War,’ and Abolitionism, 1796–1865,” Journal of Southern History 72, no. 2 (May 2006): 259–302. Carleton, George. Suppressed Book about Slavery. 1864. Reprint. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1968. Coleman, J. Winston Jr. Edward Troye, Animal and Portrait Painter. Lexington, KY: Winburn Press, 1958. Conkey Co., G.E. Conkey’s Stock Book; A Handy Reference Manual on Farm Animals. Cleveland, OH: G.E. Conkey Co., 1911. Conrads, Margaret C. American Painting and Sculpture at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute. Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 1990. Copeland, Huey and Krista Thompson, “Perpetual Returns: New World Slavery and the Matter of the Visual.” Representations 113, no. 1 (Winter 2011): 1–15. Cormack, Malcolm. Country Pursuits: British, American, And French Sporting Art from the Mellon Collection in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Exh. cat. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007. Cort, Charles. “Edward Troye in Alabama,” Alabama Heritage 80 (Spring 2006): 18–24. Cort, Charles. “Exploiting the Troye Legacy,” Alabama Heritage 80 (Spring 2006): 25. Craske, Matthew. “In the Realm of Nature and Beasts.” In Below Stairs: 400 Years of Servants’ Portraits, edited by Giles Waterfield and Anne French. Exh. cat. London: National Portrait Gallery, 2003, 153–166. Dallow, Jessica. “Antebellum Sports Illustrated: Representing African Americans in Edward Troye’s Equine Paintings.” Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 12, no. 2 (Autumn 2013). https://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/index.php/autumn13/dallow-on-edward-troye-s-equinepaintings. Dallow, Jessica. “Narratives of Race and Racehorses in Edward Troye’s Equine Paintings.” In Equestrian Cultures: Horses, Human Society, and the Discourse of Modernity, edited by Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. 110–127. Davis, Janet M. The Gospel of Kindness: Animal Welfare and the Making of Modern America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Davis, Merlene. “Ex-Slave Ruled the World.” Lexington Herald-Leader, April 30, 2006. Davis, John. The Landscape of Belief: Encountering the Holy Land in Nineteenth-Century American Art and Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996. “Death of Edward Troye,” Turf, Field and Farm, August 7, 1874. Dickey, Bronwyn. Pit Bull: The Battle over an American Icon. New York: Random House, 2016. Domer, Dennis. “Inventing the Horse Farm.” Kentucky Humanities (October 2005): 3–12. Donald, Diana Picturing Animals in Britain, 1750-1850. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Douglas, Robert L. Wadsworth Jarrell: The Artist As Revolutionary. San Francisco: Pomegranate Books, 1996. Douglass, Frederick. “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, Written by Himself (1845)”. In The Oxford Frederick Douglass Reader, edited by William L. Andrews. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Douglass, Frederick. The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered. Rochester, NY: Lee, Mann, and Co., 1854.

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

47

Drape, Joe. “Pull Out of the Kentucky Derby? Pressure on a Black Owner Mounts.” New York Times, September 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/sports/horse-racing/ kentucky-derby-breonna-taylor-harbut.html. Edgar, Patrick Nisbett. The American Race-Turf Register, Sportsman’s Herald, and General Stud Book: Containing the Pedigrees of the Most Celebrated Horses, Mares, and Geldings, That Have Distinguished Themselves as Racers on the American Turf. 2 vols. New York: Press of Henry Mason, 1833. Egerton, Judy. George Stubbs, Painter: Catalogue Raisonné. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Eisenman, Stephen F. The Cry of Nature: Art and the Making of Animal Rights. London: Reaktion Books, 2013. Ensminger, John. “The Dogs of George Washington and the Less Fortunate Ones of His Slaves.” Self-published, 2014. https://www.academia.edu/19520501/The_Dogs_of_George_ Washington_and_the_Less_Fortunate_Ones_of_His_Slaves? Favre, David and Vivien Tsang. “The Development of the Anti-Cruelty Laws during the 1800’s.” Detroit College of Law Review (1993). Animal Legal and Historical Center, Michigan College of Law. https://www.animallaw.info/article/development-anti-crueltylaws-during-1800s#N_27_. Fielder, Brigette. “Animal Humanism: Race, Species, and Affective Kinship in NineteenthCentury Abolitionism.” American Quarterly 65, no. 3 (2013): 487–514. Fielder, Brigette. “Black Dogs, Bloodhounds, and Best Friends: African Americans and Dogs in Nineteenth-Century Abolitionist Literature.” In American Beasts: Perspectives on Animals, Animality, and U.S. Culture, 1776-1920, edited by Dominik Ohrem. Berlin: Neofelis Verlag GmbH, 2017. 153–174. Finseth, Ian Frederick. Shades of Green: Visions of Nature in the Literature of American Slavery, 1770-1860. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009. Fisher, Jonelle. For All Times: The Story of Lucas Brodhead. Lexington, KY: St. Crispian Press, 2002. Flowers, Curtis Parker. Thoroughbred Horses at the Muscle Shoals. Florence, AL: printed by author, 2005. Flowers, Curtis Parker. “Parson Dick: Groom of the Forks,” Alabama Heritage 80 (Spring 2006): 33. Goings, Kenneth W. Mammy and Uncle Mose: Black Collectibles and American Stereotyping. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Greene, Ann Norton. Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Grier, Katherine C. Pets in America: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Hartman, Sadiyah V. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in NineteenthCentury America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Herbert, Henry William. Frank Forester’s Horse and Horsemanship of the United States and British Provinces of North America. 2 vols. New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1857. Hervey, John. Racing in America, 1665-1865. 2 vols. New York: The Jockey Club, 1944. Hills, Patricia. “Painting Race: Eastman Johnson’s Pictures of Slaves, Ex-Slaves, and Freedmen.” In Eastman Johnson: Painting America, edited by Teresa A. Carbone and Patricia Hills. Brooklyn, NY: Brooklyn Museum of Art, 1999. 121–165. Hotaling, Edward. The Great Black Jockeys: The Lives and Times of the Men Who Dominated America’s First National Sport. New York: Prima Publishing, 1999. Isaac, Rhys. The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Jacobs, Harriet A. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself. Boston, 1861. Project Gutenberg, 2004. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11030.

48 Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits Jacoby, Karl Jacoby. “Slave by Nature? Domestic Animals and Human Slaves.” Slavery and Abolition 15, no. 1 (1994): 88–99. Jarrell, Wadsworth and Robert L. Douglas. Edge Cutters: Paintings. Louisville: Kentucky Derby Museum, 1993. Jarrell, Wadsworth. AFRICOBRA: Experimental Art toward a School of Thought. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. Johnson, Sarah E. “‘You Should Give Them Blacks to Eat’: Waging Inter-American Wars of Torture and Terror,” American Quarterly 61, no. 1 (March 2009): 69–92. Johnson, Sarah E. The Fear of French Negroes: Transcolonial Collaboration in the Revolutionary Americas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012. Johnson, Walter. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Johnson, William Ransom. Papers. Mss1 J6398a1-4. Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA. Lacer, Genevieve Baird. Edward Troye: Painter of Thoroughbred Stories. Prospect, KY: Harmony House Publishers, 2006. Le Beau, Bryan F. “African Americans in Currier and Ives’s America: The Darktown Series.” Journal of American & Comparative Cultures 23, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 71–83. Liles, Deborah M. “Before Emancipation: Black Cowboys and the Livestock Industry.” In Black Cowboys in the American West: On the Range, on the Stage, behind the Badge, edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Michael N. Searles. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Mackay-Smith, Alexander. Papers. National Sporting Library, Middleburg, VA. Mackay-Smith, Alexander. Race Horses of America, 1832-1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye. Saratoga Springs, NY: National Museum of Racing, 1981. “Marmaduke Johnson’s Mare—Dam of Old Reality.” Letter to the Editor. American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 4, no. 1 (June 1833): 520. “Medley.” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 4, no. 9 (May 1833): 437–438. “Memoir of Trifle.” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 7, no. 4 (December 1835): 145–150. Mangum, William Preston II. A Kingdom for the Horse: The Legacy of R.A. Alexander and Woodburn Farms. Louisville, KY: Harmony House, 1999. McDaniels, Pellom III. “An Accidental Historian in Antebellum America: Edward Troye, Thoroughbred Horses, and Representations of African American Manhood and Masculinity,” Ohio Valley History 15, no. 3 (Fall 2015): 3–22. Mooney, Katherine C. Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Morgan, Philip D. “Slaves and Livestock in Eighteenth-Century Jamaica: Vineyard Pen, 1750–1751.” The William and Mary Quarterly 52, no. 1 (January 1995): 47–76. National Museum of Racing. “Ansel Williamson,” Hall of Fame, Trainers. Accessed August 25, 2021. http://www.racingmuseum.org/hall-of-fame/horse-trainers-view.asp?varID=68. Northup, Solomon. Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of NewYork, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853. 1853. Chapel Hill: Documenting the American South, University Library, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1997. https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/northup/northup.html. Olmsted, Frederick Law. The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller’s Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States: Based on the Three Former Volumes of Journeys and Investigations by the Same Author. 2 vols. New York: Mason Brothers, 1861. Parry, Tyler D. and Charlton W. Yingling. “Slavehounds and Abolition in the Americas,” Past and Present 246, no. 1 (February 2020): 69, 108. Porter, William T. “Wagner and Grey Eagle’s Races.” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 11 (March 1840): 116–132.

Edward Troye’s Racehorse Portraits

49

Potts, Alex. “Natural Order and the Call of the Wild: The Politics of Picturing,” Oxford Art Journal 13, no. 1 (1990): 12–33. Richmond Jockey Club Records, 1824–1838. Mss4 R4153 a 1. Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, VA. Ritvo, Harriet. The Animal Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987. Savage, Kirk. Standing Soldiers, Kneeling Slaves: Race, War, and Monument in NineteenthCentury America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Schreiber & Sons, Portraits of Noted Horses of America. Philadelphia, 1874. Shaw, Gwendolyn Dubois. Portraits of a People: Picturing African Americans in the Nineteenth Century. Andover, MA: Addison Gallery of Art, Phillips Academy, 2006. Smith, Harry Worcester. Papers. National Sporting Library, Middleburg, VA. Smith, Harry Worcester. “Edward Troye (1808–1874), Painter of American Blood Horses,” The Field, January 21, 1926. Smith, Harry Worcester. Catalogue of Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Edward Troye, 1808–1874. New York: Newhouse Galleries, 1938. Smith, Harry Worcester. “The Best of These Was Troye,” The Spur, January 1939, 41, 47–48. Sparks, Randy J. “Gentleman’s Sport: Horse Racing in Antebellum Charleston.” South Carolina Historical Magazine 93, no. 1 (1992): 15–30. Stein, Melissa. Measuring Manhood: Race and the Science of Masculinity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Stewart, Charles. “My Life as a Slave,” edited by Annie Porter. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 69 (October 1884): 730–738. Strausbaugh, John. Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Imitation and Insult in American Popular Culture. New York: Penguin, 2007. Stroyer, Jacob. My Life in the South. Salem: Salem Observer Book and Job Print, 1885. T., J. Review of Negro-Mania. Southern Quarterly Review 5, no. 9 (January 1852): 153–175. Tague, Ingrid H. “Companions, Servants, or Slaves? Considering Animals in EighteenthCentury Britain,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 39, 2010: 111–130. Thomas, Samuel F. Churchill Downs: A Documentary History of America’s Most Legendary Race Track. Louisville: Kentucky Derby Museum, 1995. “The Late Arabian Importations,” Spirit of the Times, November 22, 1856. “Union Course (N.Y.) Races.” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 4, no. 4 (December 1832): 201–205. Valentine, Victoria L. “Known for His Revolutionary Black Power Images, Wadsworth Jarrell Started Painting Horseracing Scenes in the 1960s.” Culture Type. May 10, 2018. https:// www.culturetype.com/2018/05/10/known-for-his-revolutionary-Black-power-imageswadsworth-jarrell-started-painting-horse-race-scenes-in-the-1960s/. Vosburgh, William Spencer. Racing in America, 1866–1921. New York: The Jockey Club, 1922. Wood, Marcus. Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780–1865. New York: Routledge, 2000. Wood, Peter H. Near Andersonville: Winslow Homer’s Civil War. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Woodburn Farm Collection. Kentucky Historical Society, Frankfort, KY. “Worthy of Regard.” American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 3, no. 7 (March 1832): 358. Yokota, Kariann Akemi. Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

2

Bone, Speed, and Blood: Schreiber & Sons and the Photographic Equine Portrait

Sixty-three-year-old Edward Troye (1808–1874) returned to his familiar haunt Woodburn Farm in Kentucky in the fall of 1871 to paint portraits of stallions Woodford Mambrino and Belmont. Four years earlier, Woodburn had passed to Alexander John (A.J.) Alexander after the death of his brother Robert Aitcheson (R.A.) Alexander. With A.J. Alexander’s frequent travels and disinterest in horses, his cousin Lucas Brodhead managed the farm’s livestock operations, including its equine divisions.1 In December, Brodhead reported to his boss about Troye’s nearly finished paintings. That of Woodford Mambrino had turned out “splendid”; that of Belmont “not so good.”2 Painting outdoors in the damp and cold likely contributed to Troye’s uneven results.3 But whether because of the Belmont picture’s poor quality, Troye’s failing health, or a scheduling conflict, A.J. Alexander turned instead, in 1872, to Philadelphia-based photography firm Schreiber & Sons to document Woodburn’s horses.4 Photographs made at Woodburn that year and at other farms across the country between 1871 and 1874 appear in the Schreibers’ Portraits of Noted Horses of America (1874), a handsome, leather-bound book containing fifty albumen prints of American Thoroughbreds and trotters, the descriptor for Standardbred harness horses before 1879. Each plate presents a horse in profile set amidst a pasture dotted with grass, thistle, or low-growing hedge (Lexington; figure 2.1). Sometimes a fence, barn, or other outbuilding is faintly visible in the distance. A caption provides the horse’s name, birth date, color, sex, breeder, pedigree, and ownership record. Today many of the book’s photographs, including those of Thoroughbred Lexington and trotter Hambletonian, are prized as the most faithful visual records of these cele­ brated nineteenth-century racehorses (Rysdyck’s Hambletonian; figure 2.2). The Schreibers emphasize two key ideas in Portraits of Noted Horses of America’s preface. First, they laud the special qualities of their medium, emphasizing their photographs are “taken from life,” with nothing omitted or added so that the images can be “forever relied upon as perfectly accurate.”5 Second, they stress the book’s value as a collection of images, placing individual animal identities in tension with collective identity. The act of bringing together such a “galaxy of distinguished horses” affords the “student of equinology” the opportunity for comparative study in determining how “form and proportion” affect “speed and endurance.” On one hand, Portraits of Noted Horses of America can be read as another iteration of equine portraiture aimed at the same audiences who collected sporting prints or commissioned equine paintings. The Schreibers’ unwavering reliance on the full-body profile view and interest in forging visual relationships between animals also roots their project in rather conventional traditions of natural history and comparative DOI: 10.4324/9781351034340-3

Bone, Speed, and Blood 51

Figure 2.1 Schreiber & Sons, Lexington. 1872. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library.

anatomy illustration. On the other, the portfolio’s use of the nascent technology of photography and organization of images into unfolding genealogical micronarratives of trotting and Thoroughbred horses connect it to contemporary theories and prac­ tices of breeding. Portraits of Noted Horses of America thus signals the transfor­ mation of equine portraiture from its more customary role as an emblem of its owner or a memento of its animal subject into something more akin to a scientific treatise on improving the American trotter, specifically through the addition of Thoroughbred blood.

Philadelphia, the Schreibers, and Thomas Eakins By the time Schreiber & Sons published Portraits of Noted Horses of America in 1874, the firm had already established itself as a leading animal photographic outfit. It would remain preeminent in the genre until its demise during World War I. Patriarch Franz George Schreiber (1803–1892), also known as George Francis

52 Bone, Speed, and Blood

Figure 2.2 Schreiber & Sons, Hambletonian. 1873. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library.

Schreiber, immigrated to Philadelphia from Russia in 1834. A printer by trade, he published a German-language newspaper in the city for several years before taking up portrait photography professionally, first in partnership with Frederick Langenheim and later with Ridgway Glover.6 Franz Schreiber began photographing animals during the 1860s, after allegedly growing weary of humans’ “whims and caprices.”7 He and his eldest son Gerhard went into business together after Glover’s death in 1866, renaming their 818 Arch Street office Schreiber & Son. Soon thereafter, with the addition of several of Gerhard’s brothers, the firm became Schreiber & Sons. At least four, and perhaps as many as six, of Franz’s sons worked in the family enterprise at various times. One writer joked that no one could be sure of the number, as “we can never count them.”8 Henry and Conrad oversaw the “animal pictures.”9 The entrepreneurial Schreibers photographed livestock, fowl, family pets, and zoo animals, although horses became their forte. They sold their wares as individual prints and stereocard sets under the titles Instantaneous Photographs of Animals, A Specialty and Animal Studies from Nature (Portrait of a Dog, between 1870 and 1880;

Bone, Speed, and Blood 53

Figure 2.3 Schreiber & Sons, Portrait of a Dog. Between 1870 and 1880. Albumen on ste­ reograph mount. 3.5 × 7 in. Marian S. Carson Collection at the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

figure 2.3). The family’s photographs also illustrated period newspapers, magazines, stock books, and product advertisements. The Schreibers even protected their work through copyrights. In 1881, they sued a drygoods company for copyright infringement over its use of the Schreibers’ The Mother Elephant “Hebe”and her Baby “Americus” photograph on packing labels. Though the Schreibers ultimately lost their case, it progressed all the way to the US Supreme Court (Thornton v. Schreiber, 124 US 612, 1888).10 The family also maintained a strong presence in Philadelphia’s artistic and scientific circles, exhibiting work in local photography club exhibitions and at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Gerhard often presented on such technical topics as lenses and the chemical make-up of collodion at Photographic Society of Philadelphia meetings. The society’s journal, the Philadelphia Photographer, also twice featured Schreiber & Sons’ photographs as frontispieces to issues: a horse-drawn wagon loaded with hay in September 1872; and a chicken, dog, and cow in February 1873. Today the Schreiber name is perhaps better known to art history in connection to Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins. Eakins’s use of photographs as painting aids is welldocumented, for example, in May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-inHand) (1879–1880, Philadelphia Museum of Art) where Eadweard Muybridge’s animal locomotion plates, first published in Scientific American in 1878, guided Eakins’s representation of equine and carriage movement. Eakins’s earliest known painting based on a photograph, however, is Grouse (H. Schreiber’s Setter) (1872, Mint Museum of Art), a portrait of Henry Schreiber’s setter dog that reproduces a Schreiber & Sons’ canine photograph published in the Philadelphia Photographer. Eakins even included Henry’s name and address on Grouse’s collar. Eakins’s portrait of Grouse appears to closely replicate the Schreiber photograph, using the grid system to enlarge the setter’s proportions on canvas.11 Alan C. Braddock has argued, however, that Eakins did more than merely copy his source. Eakins imbues Grouse with a

54 Bone, Speed, and Blood subjectivity, manifested in his thick, lifelike fur and downturned head, a pensive pose that mirrors those found in Eakins’s human portraits. Yet rather than simply attri­ buting this pose to Eakins’s anthropomorphizing of the dog, an extension of the more common, “resolutely anthropocentric” interpretations of the artist as a brilliant painter of incisive, psychological human portraits, Braddock connects Grouse’s representation to Eakins’s own interests in animals and, more broadly, to the multispecies life of Philadelphia. Eakins studied animal (as well as human) anatomy rigorously, often sketching at slaughterhouses. He and his wife Susan McDowell Eakins, who married in 1884, lived with quite the menagerie on Mount Vernon Street: cats, birds, rabbits, turtles, dogs, and a mischievous capuchin monkey named Bobby.12 Eakins owned horses as well, including the chestnut Baldy, acquired on a trip out West, and the grey Billy.13 During this period, as Eakins’s activities support, advancements in petkeeping ri­ tuals, zoos, animal welfare, large-scale industrial slaughter, laboratory science, and veterinary medicine reordered human-animal relations. Some animals gained closer physical proximity with humans and were increasingly recognized as feeling in­ dividuals in their own rights. Studio photographic portraits of pet dogs and cats alone, without their owners, especially suggested this evolving perception.14 Gerhard offered a comparable view of horses who, he said, “have their different natures,” just like human beings.15 Lab animals or those bred for slaughter became more distanced and were reduced to merely apparatus or capital. Eakins’s own conflicting attitudes towards animals—affirmations of animal emotions and advocation for the humane treatment of the city’s carriage horses as a member of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals countered by affiliations with vivisectors, anato­ mists, and other cruel animal experimenters—echo these period processes of do­ mestication and instrumentalization and inflect his depiction of Henry’s beloved setter as a realistic, sentient being.16 So too can the Schreibers’ equine photographs be understood within these competing impulses: with the intimate, bust-length portrait of the “sweet” mare Alix17 more in line with their photographs of cherished pet dogs (Alix, 1895; figure 2.4); and with the full-body portrait of Lexington, included in Portraits of Noted Horses of America, representative of an exemplary performer and breeding specimen. Eakins met the Schreiber brothers rowing on the Schuylkill River.18 He and Henry became close friends, surely bonding over sport, art, and animals. In addition to their thriving animal portrait business, the Schreibers, like the Eakinses, kept horses, dogs, and other creatures at their 62nd Street and Elmwood Avenue residence, affectio­ nately known as “Down Home.” Franz’s only son who did not take up photography professionally reputedly became a veterinarian.19 Henry and Eakins’s friendship may thus have impelled both Eakins’s representation of animal subjects and his experi­ mentation with photography. Beginning in the 1870s, Eakins photographed dogs, cats, and monkey Bobby alone and with friends, family members, and students. He later posed clothed and nude human models, including himself and his wife, astride and alongside horses. Many of Eakins’s equine photographs date to the period he was occupied with the bronze equestrian reliefs for the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza (1893–1894).20 Eakins used his mustang Billy and Alexander J. Cassatt’s horse Clinker to model Abraham Lincoln’s and Ulysses S. Grant’s mounts, respectively. Evidence suggests, however, he also continued to reference Schreiber

Bone, Speed, and Blood 55

Figure 2.4 Schreiber & Sons, Alix. 1895. 8 3/4 × 7 3/4 in. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs: Photography Collection. New York Public Library.

images. His archives contain Schreiber photographs of Grant’s Arabian Leopard and Woodburn Farm’s Thoroughbreds Australian and Lexington, the sire of Grant’s war horse Cincinnati.21 Eakins reputedly felt a mustang suited Lincoln, but had difficulty identifying a live model for Grant’s mount. After traveling to West Point and to Newport and Long Branch horse shows, Eakins finally found Cassatt’s Clinker closer to home.22 A “muscular, compact horse built for speed and endurance,”23 Clinker resembled a stockier, shorter-coupled version of Lexington (Clinker, 1892; figure 2.5). With Cincinnati and Lexington dead, the Schreiber’s profile photograph of Lexington may have provided a useful image from which to source a live model.

Antecedents: From the Kentucky Stock Book and Race Horses of America to Portraits of Noted Horses of America The Schreibers were not the first to attempt a visual portfolio of American horses. Troye had been involved with two earlier failures: the Kentucky Stock Book (1837–1841), which included cattle and donkeys as well as horses, and Race Horses of America (1866). Looking to English stud books and herd books, Kentucky

56 Bone, Speed, and Blood

Figure 2.5 Thomas Eakins, Clinker. 1892. Painted plaster, wire armature, muslin. 25 3/4 × 25 3/4 × 4 1/2 in. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with the Center for American Art Fund, 2009, 2009-83-1.

breeders launched the Kentucky Stock Book in the fall of 1837 to document the state’s animals through pedigree records and engravings. They hired lithographer Thomas Campbell & Co. to produce four hundred copies of a two hundred page volume, which would include fifty plates and be financed by $25.00 subscriptions, and Troye to create paintings and sketches for lithographing. Campbell apparently even moved his printing operation from Louisville to Ghent, Kentucky, near Stock Book chairman Lewis Sanders’s Grass Hills farm. Work began quickly, with thirtyfour lithographs completed by December 1838.24 Thirty-two of these—twenty-four of cattle, five of horses, and two of jacks—survive, with all but one attributed to Troye. Few of Troye’s corresponding original paintings are known, even though the size and subject matter of numerous Troye canvases dating from 1837 to 1838 in­ dicate he made them for the Stock Book.25 Progress on the Stock Book stalled soon thereafter. It stopped completely by 1841, with subscriptions left unpaid and, ac­ cording to Sanders, a lackadaisical horse committee that failed to commission paintings and furnish pedigrees in a timely manner. The economic depression trig­ gered by the 1837 Panic surely exacerbated the book’s demise.26

Bone, Speed, and Blood 57 Nearly thirty years later, in 1866, Troye initiated a similar project, this time managed entirely by the artist and featuring only horses. Race Horses of America, conceived as a royal octavo volume, would showcase portraits of Thoroughbred stallions who had “contributed most to produce the present superior turf horse of America, with a memoir listing full pedigree, performances, and the most noted of their get.”27 Its title and intended format may derive from royal octavo editions of John James Audubon’s Birds of America, the miniature, affordable versions of the extraordinary double-elephant folio known as the Havell Edition (1826–1838) that were published between 1840 and 1871.28 Troye’s undertaking also coincided with his friend and supporter Sanders Deweese Bruce’s preparation of an American Thoroughbred stud book. Troye’s “portraits in oil,” made by photographing paint­ ings copied from the artist’s earlier originals, then hand coloring in oil, dating, and signing each salted paper print, would form a complement to Bruce’s text.29 Troye’s novel process would further capitalize on photography’s currency, reproductive ef­ ficiency, and reputation for truthfulness, but retain the artist’s personal touch. Upon patrons’ urgings for a quicker production, Troye decided to issue Race Horses of America in numbers rather than a complete volume. Number one, published in the spring of 1867, featured portraits of Boston and his most illustrious son Lexington, each mounted on board and framed in a mat with oval-shaped top and beveled gold edges, with accompanying memoirs. Number two came out several months later with only portraits—no memoirs—of three horses: Henry, his great rival American Eclipse, and Kentucky. By that time, however, Troye had abandoned his project due to poor sales, higher than anticipated production expenses, and an experimental process that yielded substandard artworks.30 The Schreibers completed Portraits of Noted Horses of America seven years later. Why did their volume succeed when both the Kentucky Stock Book and Race Horses of America had failed? Differences in production processes and results—or lack thereof—in the case of the earlier ventures are both reasons. The Stock Book was a complicated, costly undertaking that comprised an organizing body, subcommittees for cattle and horses, subscribers, livestock owners, an artist, a lithographer, and a printer. Too many parties, coupled with a financial crisis that halted the flow of capital, was a recipe for failure and the project fizzled out before completion. Race Horses of America depended on fewer persons (Troye along with a photographer and a printer), but it too involved significant overhead for materials, photography and printing services, and a New York City studio—Troye used the publication Turf, Field, and Farm’s Park Row offices.31 Troye’s subjects were also limited to those horses he had already painted, and in turn to those paintings that he had access to copy. Troye priced his first issue of Race Horses of America at eight dollars. Realizing quickly that this was too low to cover his expenses, he increased the price to fifteen dollars. But buyers clearly balked at such a steep sum for peculiar pictures, despite the praise of sporting journal editors who insisted Troye’s hand-oiled photographs were in fact good paintings, worth at least twice that much.32 Less is known about the circumstances surrounding the creation of Portraits of Noted Horses of America. The Philadelphia Photographer announced the book’s publication in July 1874, describing it as a “very beautiful work containing photo­ graphs of the principal race-horses of the country.”33 No mention is made of price, nor is there a request for subscriptions.34 Upon the encouragement of “several emi­ nent breeders,”35 the Schreibers likely began compiling Portraits of Noted Horses of

58 Bone, Speed, and Blood America between 1873 and 1874, sourcing negatives from existing stock made over the previous years. They perhaps augmented this body of images with new com­ missions, secured by promising patrons inclusion of their horses in the upcoming book. Apart from travel and photography, the book’s creation involved sophisticated darkroom processes including negative retouching and combination printing to rea­ lize albumen prints depicting horses posed perfectly on verdant knolls, sans handlers or bridles, with ears pricked forward. That the Schreibers used composite techniques, especially for rendering landscape backdrops, is supported by Gerhard’s 1872 pre­ sentation to the Pennsylvania Photographic Association of a print made from three negatives. He explained that he began experimenting with combination printing after reading Henry Peach Robinson’s Pictorial Effect in Photography (1869), finding the method especially promising for landscape photography.36 Schreiber photographic prints housed in archives and private collections showing horses with handlers and tack, masked out backgrounds, corrective markings, repainted tails, drawn and painted in landscape elements, and misshapen shadows also provide some clues about production stages of the book’s photographs, if not the complete process (figures 2.6–2.8).37 The Schreibers employed the Robinson trimmer and mounts designed by Philadelphia firm A.M. Collins, Son & Co. to size and mount their photographs.38 With such a large family of technical experts, including six photo­ grapher brothers, much of the book’s production could be done in house. Portraits of Noted Horses of America’s photographs are both like and unlike Troye’s earlier experiments with oil on salted paper prints in combining elements of artistry with mechanical transcription. Horses pose advantageously to show off their conformation with forelegs and rear legs slightly in front of the respective others. Horizon lines, usually located near horses’ knees and hocks, demarcate foregrounds

Figure 2.6 Schreiber & Sons, Longfellow. ca. 1874. Albumen on stereograph mount. From series Animal Studies from Nature. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs: Photography Collection. New York Public Library.

Bone, Speed, and Blood 59

Figure 2.7 Schreiber & Sons, Dan Patch. ca. 1903. 8 3/4 × 7 3/4 in. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs: Photography Collection. New York Public Library.

from empty backgrounds. And brushstrokes add painterly touches to grasses and other pasture vegetation. The main difference lies in the representation of the animal, the Schreibers’ facilitated by the camera, Troye’s by the artist’s hand. In Troye’s salted paper print of Lexington (ca. 1866; figure 2.9), based on the artist’s 1866 oil portrait (but in this example never hand colored), the horse’s wide, dished head is unnaturally small compared to his body. His spindly legs seem too thin to support his weight and his tail arches in Troye’s signature fashion. The Schreibers’ photograph of the horse, made three years before his death, captures instead the more natural proportions of Lexington’s body, his convex nose, straight tail, deep shoulder, and thickened throat, the result of an enlarged thyroid. Lexington’s blindness is also observable by his cloudy eye with no discernible iris or pupil. Because of their per­ ceived accuracy, the Schreibers’ photographs far surpassed Troye’s portraits’ value to horsepersons who desired technical understanding, supported by reliable visual evi­ dence, of proven conformation as well as blood.39 Perhaps Troye’s inability to compete with equine portrait photographers who provided a more trustworthy and less expensive product is why he stopped painting in 1872, the year the Schreibers first arrived at Woodburn.40

60 Bone, Speed, and Blood

Figure 2.8 Schreiber & Sons, Longfellow. 1874. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library.

The Appeal of Trotters Portraits of Noted Horses of America may too have had wider appeal to contemporary audiences than Troye’s Thoroughbred portfolio because it included both Thoroughbreds and trotters. Trotters comprise the majority of horses in the Schreibers’ book (seventy-six percent, or thirty-eight trotters to twelve Thoroughbreds), reflecting harness racing’s meteoric rise in popularity, especially in the northern United States, in the years surrounding the Civil War. During this period, harness racing surpassed flat racing to become what sports historians have called the first truly modern American sport. Much of the trotter’s allure stemmed from its democratic image. Early harness racing required neither formal tracks nor professional drivers. Impromptu races might take place on country roads and urban thoroughfares. Fast trotters also cost much less than pedigreed Thoroughbreds, as speed not bloodline mattered. Many horses spent their early lives as working animals. Lady Suffolk, purchased for $112.50, pulled an oyster cart before becoming one of the sport’s earliest celebrities, earning thousands of dollars over her fifteen-year career.41 Such tales of rags to riches achieved through

Bone, Speed, and Blood 61

Figure 2.9 Edward Troye, Lexington. ca. 1866. Salted paper print. 8 3/4 × 11 1/4 in. National Sporting Library & Museum, Harry Worcester Smith Archive.

talent and drive (of both mongrel horses and plebeian owners) fostered associations between trotting and Americanness. Henry W. Herbert, writing under the pseudonym Frank Forester, lauded the trotter as the “most truly characteristic and national type of horse.”42 Trotting’s reality of course belied its perception. It still took money to keep and race trotters, limiting horse ownership to the middle class and above. Melvin Adelman argues, however, that the perception of the trotter as a distinctly American animal has merit. Though harness racing was popular in England, it first developed into a sport in the USA, where its common character fueled its commercialization. Smaller investments in horse acquisition and training costs meant tracks could offer lower entry fees and purses, which equaled cheaper gate fares more affordable to the lower classes. Soon trotting became the country’s largest spectator sport with over seventy US tracks offering organized races by 1858.43 As harness racing expanded and with more money and status on offer, it attracted wealthier participants. New York publisher Robert Bonner purchased Dexter in 1867 for the astonishing price of $33,000. He later spent $40,000 for Maud S. Bonner was part of the new monied class, rather than the blue-blooded elite that remained largely focused on Thoroughbred racing, the “sport of kings.”44 This class of trotting owners who came from workingclass roots and gained wealth through entrepreneurship—perhaps best represented by

62 Bone, Speed, and Blood Leland Stanford—only heightened trotting’s democratic, nationalistic ethos. Such ex­ orbitant prices also kept alive the belief that any horse might be the next Dexter, ready to make its owner’s fortune. Trotting’s popularity made it an especially apt subject for artists like Curriers & Ives who advertised themselves as printmakers to the American people. Throughout the latter nineteenth century, they published hundreds of trottingthemed lithographs featuring horses in action: Lady Thorn, Goldsmith Maid, Dexter, St. Julien, Jay-Eye-See, and Flora Temple, the “bob-tailed nag” im­ mortalized in Stephen Foster’s song “Camp Town Races.” An example by Louis Maurer, a Currier & Ives artist known for sporting scenes, depicts Flora Temple and Princess as they race over New York’s Eclipse course on June 23, 1859.45 Most horses look similar in Currier & Ives prints, distinguishable from one another only through size, coloring, and markings such as blazes, stars, or white legs. Here, the smaller, leaner Flora Temple, with docked tail and ribbon bedecked braided mane, holds Princess’s wheel, trailing slightly. The two mares battled four times over four weeks in a series of match races that summer, with Flora Temple besting Princess in all except the second race on June 23.46 Fifteen years later the Schreibers photo­ graphed Flora Temple for Portraits of Noted Horses of America (figure 2.10). By then a fat, sway-backed broodmare long retired from the turf, she is still easily identifiable by her signature docked tail. Flora Temple’s stature made her a prime candidate for inclusion in Portraits of Noted Horses of America. So too did the reputations of other famous horses like world champion trotter Ethan Allen, beloved mare Goldsmith Maid who traveled by private railcar during her storied harness career, or Lexington, the paragon of Thoroughbreds, who led the American Sire List for more than a decade.47 How the Schreibers selected their book’s complete equine roster remains less clear. They surely heeded the advice of the “eminent breeders” (and generous patrons) who encouraged the project, likely those whose horses appear repeatedly throughout Portraits of Noted Horses of America’s pages. These include six horses from businessman Charles Backman’s Stony Ford Farm in Orange County, New York, that stood several trot­ ting stallions out of Hambletonian48; four horses from Henry N. Smith’s Fashion Stud Farm, an impressive facility with racetrack and grandstand in Trenton, New Jersey, where General Grant kept his horse and where trotters Goldsmith Maid and Lady Thorn were stabled; and eleven horses from A.J. Alexander’s Woodburn Farm, where Lexington resided and which was then the most prominent stock farm in the United States. Of these establishments, Woodburn Farm had, under its founder R.A. Alexander, been most involved in publishing ventures instrumental in advancing the racing and breeding industries. In 1865, R.A. gave brothers Sanders D. Bruce and Benjamin Gratz Bruce funds to purchase the library of and mailing lists of defunct journal Spirit of the Times, which they used to initiate a new sporting journal, Turf, Field and Farm. Kentuckian Sanders Bruce, a friend of the artist Troye, had earlier run the Phoenix Hotel in Lexington, Kentucky, the de facto headquarters for racing men before the Civil War. Troye often exhibited paintings at the hotel. R.A. commissioned many paintings from Troye that, as discussed in the previous chapter, not only documented horses’ likenesses, but also worked in tandem with the burgeoning horse industry’s race reports, memoirs, and pedigree histories to protect breeders’ invest­ ments and legitimize values. R.A. began recording pedigrees in Woodburn’s annual

Bone, Speed, and Blood 63

Figure 2.10 Schreiber & Sons, Flora Temple. 1874. Albumen print, 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library.

sales catalogs, so exhaustive they often included ancestry up through the ninth dam and stallion. He later hired Bruce to preserve Woodburn’s pedigrees, along with ownership records and purchase prices.49 Bruce started publishing pedigrees in Turf, Field, and Farm as he worked towards his ultimate goal: an American Thoroughbred stud book. With additional capital provided by R.A., he released the first volume in 1868, dedicated to his benefactor who had died the prior year.50 Bruce also continued to promote Troye in his journal, printing Troye’s announcement of Race Horses of America and tracking its progress. It is plausible to assume that before his death, R.A. subscribed to Troye’s project and may have even steered its contents since its first issue featured Woodburn’s famous stallion Lexington. A.J. Alexander, upon in­ heriting Woodburn, continued his brother’s custom of commissioning portraits of Woodburn’s valuable stock. He hired Troye to paint trotting stallions Woodford Mambrino and Belmont in 1871 with the purpose, Troye’s biographer Alexander Mackay-Smith theorizes, of showcasing the farm’s homebreds versus the mainly purchased and imported animals his brother had Troye paint.51 The next year

64 Bone, Speed, and Blood A.J. hired Schreiber & Sons to photograph both stallions, along with Thoroughbreds Lexington, Asteroid, and Australian. Copyright dates inscribed on Portraits of Noted Horses of America’s photographs indicate the Schreibers returned to Woodburn again in 1873 and 1874 to photograph more horses to supplement their book. The Schreibers included eleven photographs of the farm’s horses in Portraits of Noted Horses of America, or twenty-two percent of its fifty total images. R.A. Alexander’s deceased stallion Abdallah52 is also the sire of four other horses. This sizeable amount may be simply explained by Woodburn’s breeding renown and patronage, with the Schreibers making a sound commercial decision. Yet the book’s composition of horses and timing, coupled with Woodburn’s past support of artists and publishers, also suggests the more concerted influence of farm proprietor A.J. Alexander and manager Brodhead.

Woodburn, Wallace, and Thoroughbreds Portraits of Noted Horses of America’s photographs date between 1871 and 1874. These years marked a turning point in the trotting world, with the founding of the National Trotting Association (1871), an official Grand Circuit of races in Springfield, Massachusetts, Utica and Buffalo, New York, and Cleveland, Ohio (1873), and publications devoted to trotting pedigrees and news.53 In 1871, John H. Wallace published volume one of Wallace’s American Trotting Register, the first cohesive collection of trotting pedigrees and race records. Volume two followed in 1874.54 Building on his register’s success, in 1875 Wallace began Wallace’s Monthly, a journal devoted to breeding science and race summaries.55 The increasing regula­ tion of the sport culminated four years later with the National Association of Trotting Breeders’ official rules governing a horse’s entrance into Wallace’s American Trotting Register, the principal one being that the horse itself, its ancestors, or its offspring had trotted a mile in two minutes and thirty seconds or less.56 Wallace’s register conse­ quently proved important to trotting horse breeders since once rules were established, a horse’s admittance, via its, its ancestor’s, or its offspring’s record, guaranteed ac­ ceptance as a “Standard-bred.” Prior to the establishment of sanctioned standards, however, Wallace’s early register volumes sought foremost to formalize the key genealogies of trotter families, with the imported English Thoroughbred Messenger (f. 1780, by Mambrino) the trotter’s foundation sire. Hence the first volume of Wallace’s register includes a lengthy discussion of Messenger’s merits as well as a fullpage chart of his pedigree.57 Portraits of Noted Horses of America’s organization broadly conforms to Wallace’s 1871 register by leading out its pages with prominent descendants of Messenger: Messenger’s great grandsons, Rysdyck’s Hambletonian (also known as Hambletonian 10) and his half-brother Americus, followed by Hambletonian’s sons, including stallions Jay Gould, George Wilkes, Sentinel, Waverly, Idol, and Bolton. Next are horses Belmont, West Wind, Goldsmith’s Maid, and Rosalind, all sired by Alexander’s Abdallah who was also by Hambletonian. Another branch of the Messenger bloodline succeeds Abdallah’s progeny, with horses, such as Woodford Mambrino and Lady Thorn, descended from another of Messenger’s great grandsons, Mambrino Chief. Mambrino Chief’s pedigree includes Messenger on his sire’s side, and on his dam’s side, Justin Morgan, the foundation sire of what would become the Morgan horse breed and whose bloodlines descend through three key offspring: the

Bone, Speed, and Blood 65 Woodbury, Sherman, and Bulrush Morgans (Wallace includes a section on Morgans in his register).58 Morgan blood logically flows through the pedigrees of the ensuing group that includes Ethan Allen, Honest Allen, Draco, Elmo (a horse sold, the Schreibers’ caption states, by noted harness trainer and driver Orrin Hickok for “$15,000 gold”), and Amos’ C.M. Clay. Many of these horses later came to be re­ gistered as both Standardbreds and Morgans.59 A cluster of legendary trotting mares and broodmares follow Amos’ C.M. Clay: American Girl (by Amos’ C.M. Clay), Lucy, Green Mountain Maid (the dam of superstar Electioneer), and Flora Temple. Punctuating this group is stallion Abdallah Star, a horse whose grandsire, Seely’s American Star, possessed an enigmatic pedigree, revolving around whether he des­ cended from the Morgan Justin Morgan or the Thoroughbred Diomed.60 Why that mattered will become clearer in my forthcoming discussion regarding whether run­ ning horse bloodlines like those of the English Thoroughbed Diomed (a foundation sire of American Thoroughbreds) produced excellence in the trotter. The Schreiber caption listing Seely’s American Star’s sire as Stockholm’s American Star ascribes to the Diomed pedigree, meaning that as a horse rich in Thoroughbred blood, Abdallah Star fittingly presages the book’s concluding twelve horses, all Thoroughbreds with little, if any Messenger blood, including: Lexington—a Diomed descendent, Leamington, Leamington’s sons Longfellow and Enquirer, Lexington’s son Asteroid (figure 2.11) and daughter Hester, and broodmares Eltham Lass and Lavender. The Schreibers’ decision to place Thoroughbreds at the end of the book may have been pure pragmatism, with types and breeds logically separated. Yet nine of these Thoroughbreds belonged to A.J. Alexander and all had roots in the Bluegrass region, which remained, even after the Civil War’s decimation of southern racing, the center of the Thoroughbred breeding industry.61 In the early 1870s, Woodburn’s manager Lucas Brodhead began a feud with trotting tsar Wallace over the worth of Thoroughbred blood in the modern trotter. Brodhead believed that an infusion of hot Thoroughbred blood, from not only Messenger, but also other Thoroughbred running horses like Diomed, into largely cold-blooded trotting stock enhanced a trotter’s speed and stamina. Though notions of cold- and warm-blood admixture still pervade horse breeding theory today, Donna Landry explains that hot and cold blood “bear no real zoological significance,” but are geographical in nature, with animals from more northerly, colder latitudes pos­ sessing larger bodies and proportional limbs, and those in southerly, hotter latitudes having more refined frames and extremities and sleeker coats.62 Wallace, in contrast to Brodhead, maintained that only Messenger families proved worthy. Consequently, Portraits of Horses of America’s mixture of trotters and Thoroughbreds, along with its preponderance of Kentucky horses, may be understood as a rebuttal (at the behest of Brodhead and his boss A.J. Alexander) to Wallace’s breeding theories articulated in the early volumes of his American Trotting Register, if not entirely to Wallace’s or­ ganization of trotting bloodlines. In so doing, the Schreibers’ book asserts the status of individual Thoroughbred horses as noted horses in their own rights (and the on­ going importance of Thoroughbred racing and its attendant breeding industry), but also as valuable breeding stock for improving the trotter. Improvement is a thorny and subjective term. Certainly, ideas about and practices for improving animals during the eighteenth and especially nineteenth centuries are imbricated in modernity’s rhetoric of progress. In the trotter, as heats were reduced and distances shortened, improvement would come to mean a horse that could cover

66 Bone, Speed, and Blood

Figure 2.11 Schreiber & Sons, Asteroid. 1872. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library.

a mile as fast as possible at the trot. Yet how to create that horse was a question that generated intense debate. Could the trotting instinct (and attendant speed), as Wallace called it, be portended through a distinctive physique or way of moving? Or through particular bloodlines, devised by fantasies of purity and fixity embodied in the concept of breed?63 The trotter, or Standardbred, developed rather differently from the American Thoroughbred. At first, trotters could be any sort—most were grade horses of mixed ancestry—as long as they could trot fast, and many stories exist like the discovery of the “Old Grey Mare” Lady Suffolk pulling an oyster cart. But finding good horses this way was too haphazard, and as the sport of trotting took off (in track venues as well as along city thoroughfares) so too did the development of more precise breeding strategies. In part, American breeding methods arose from earlier English models, namely the work of eighteenth-century English farmer Robert Bakewell, who in­ troduced the theory of progeny testing: “selecting his breeding stock according to the extent to which they had transmitted desired characteristics” to rapidly improve

Bone, Speed, and Blood 67 64

animals. Following the progeny testing theory, fast horses would produce other fast horses (like begets like), be them flat racers or trotters. Over the nineteenth century, Thoroughbred breeders increasingly spurned progeny testing to focus more intensely on pedigree models, derived from another English cattle breeder, Thomas Bates.65 This saw the transformation of a horse identified by type or purpose to breed, for example, the running horse to the Thoroughbred.66 Hence the modern American Thoroughbred stud book admits horses based on heredity, not performance. 1879s trotting’s standards, settled on after much deliberation, instead furthered the pro­ genital breeding model since any horse meeting them (a 2:30 or better record for a horse, its ancestors, or offspring) gained entry to Wallace’s register to become a standard horse. The Standardbred thus became principally defined by performance. Wallace’s early volumes, however, attempted to unite progeny and heredity models by providing not only racing summaries, but also a blueprint of key trotting families descended from Thoroughbred foundation sire Messenger. For Wallace, breeders should focus on only Messenger families. If Messenger, however, was a Thoroughbred, why, Wallace queries in volume two of his trotting register, are other Thoroughbred lines excluded? Because, he answers, not all Thoroughbreds possess the crucial characteristic of Messenger and his descendants: the trotting instinct, a combination of mental and physical inclination. That this instinct exists only in certain equine families is as clear to Wallace as “that the pointing instinct exists in a certain breed of dog.”67 The addition of another Thoroughbred family’s “blood” may heighten fieriness and athleticism, but those qualities may negatively affect a horse’s special gait. Wallace was essentially a the­ orist, a literary rather than practical horseman. He didn’t own or drive trotters. Nor did he attend races or visit stock farms.68 His beliefs derived largely from hereditary science, race constancy theory, and evolutionary biology rather than from direct experience or observation. Wallace’s Horse of America (1897), a book synthesizing his earlier publications, is rife with racist anxieties about degeneration, telegony, and atavism occurring from imprecise, careless equine cross-breeding. In one instance, he likens the appearance of a “long-concealed black drop” from Black-white human admixture to the disappearance of the trotting instinct in non-Messenger descended equine unions, revealing how human categories of identity and theories of inheritance intersected with notions of animal breeds and breeding.69 But it is an absence rather than presence Wallace feared: the loss of a horse’s natural propensity to trot. For these reasons, trotting breeders must pay special attention to preserving the prepotent Messenger line, breeding horses descended only from his sons to keep the line intact and sustain its distinctive gait. If Wallace’s push to establish a genealogy for the trotter, which centered on the prepotency of Messenger descendants and excluded other Thoroughbred families, arose in part from period science (and pseudoscience), it was equally motivated by his personal dislike of Woodburn Farm, especially manager Brodhead. Wallace’s hosti­ lity towards Woodburn began the decade earlier, with R.A. Alexander’s support of Sanders Bruce and his stud book. Woodburn had long been a breeding powerhouse, beginning when R.A. first assembled a group of impressive stock (cattle, sheep, and horses) in the 1850s, and in tandem instituted innovative record-keeping practices and systems of farm management. Woodburn’s pedigrees and R.A. Alexander’s sponsorship made possible Bruce’s American Stud Book (1868). The year before Bruce’s stud book appeared, however, Wallace released his own (Thoroughbred) stud

68 Bone, Speed, and Blood book, which proved to be an overwhelming failure. First, Wallace’s stud book, which compiled horses by sex, diverged from the familiar English General Stud Book practice of providing an alphabetical list of broodmares and their foals under each stallion. Second, Wallace’s book left out many horse pedigrees that Thoroughbred breeders deemed critical. And third, Wallace’s stud book undermined Bruce’s long­ standing efforts, delayed by the Civil War, to publish his own stud book. Because most leading Thoroughbred breeders and turf men, especially the Kentucky faction, supported Bruce and believed his pedigrees sound, they immediately declared Wallace’s stud book illegitimate.70 Soured by his stud book debacle, Wallace used his trotting register for retribution.71 In volume two, he calls Bruce’s stud book “little less than a calamity” and Bruce a loutish, lazy compiler.72 Without naming him outright, he also insinuates that R.A.’s breeding philosophies, rooted in cattle methods, were inherently flawed.73 Woodburn’s practices relied largely on crossing and inter­ breeding Hambletonian and Morgan stallion lines (Woodford Mambrino, Belmont, and Pilot, Jr.) with Thoroughbred dams by running horse ancestors such as Planet, Australian, and Lexington. Thoroughbred and trotter historian John Hervey states that “as all students of pedigrees are aware, the blood of Lexington, through many different channels, enters a host of our great trotting genealogies, and these animals all trace to him through sons and daughters begotten at Woodburn.”74 Woodburn’s methods would later produce champion trotters Jay-Eye-See, Maud S., and Palo Alto. Because experience showed Brodhead that Thoroughbred blood (strategically inter­ jected based on genetic theories of sex) enhanced the trotter’s stamina, refinement, and speed, he found Wallace’s obsession with Messenger bloodlines (by in-breeding only Messenger stallions and dams) profoundly spurious, seeing it for what it ef­ fectively was: a means of discrediting Woodburn.75 Other breeders (and theorists) such as Henry T. Helm affirmed Woodburn’s practices. Like Wallace’s later Horse of America, Helm’s 1878 study of American Roasters and Trotting Horses draws heavily from contemporary heredity theory. Like Wallace too, Helm believed the sire transmitted the propensity to trot, in accordance with cultural traditions of patrimony and patriarchy. Helm sided with Brodhead, however, over the question of Thoroughbred dams, even though he balked at “pure” Thoroughbred mares, favoring cross-bred mares with Thoroughbred sire lines.76 That the dam contributes “endurance and pluck, what we call blood,” makes her critical in “producing a trotter of the highest excellence.” Helm cites Lady Thorn (by Mambrino Chief) as an example, whose dam was descended from the English Thoroughbred Diomed on both her dam’s and sire’s sides. Another example of Diomed’s important influence on the Standardbred is Seely’s American Star, if the Portraits of Noted Horses of America’s pedigree is accurate, since his female progeny produced champion trotters Jay Gould and Dexter. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, Wallace’s and Brodhead’s rift intensified. They quarreled in the pages of sporting journals—Wallace using his Monthly and Brodhead the Bruce brothers’ Turf, Field, and Farm—over not only the worth of Thoroughbred blood in trotters, but also trotting standards and time trials. At the heart of each dispute was Woodburn’s incipient influence over the increasingly lu­ crative trotting industry. Brodhead urged the adoption of a 2:30 minute or better mile time standard for entry into Wallace’s registry: “Let the breeding public cast aside musty theories as to the ‘prepotency’ of remote ancestors, reached through ques­ tionable sources, and consider not how much Messenger blood a horse has, but how

Bone, Speed, and Blood 69 77

much 2:30 blood flows in his veins.” Within the parameters of this 2:30 standard, Brodhead also wanted a rule granting registry to grandams and sisters of standard animals. Brodhead’s proposed standards, especially the sister or “Pinafore” standard it became known, infuriated Wallace, who recognized them as calculated attempts to benefit Woodburn. First, they would open the registry to spurious crosses who could trot a mile in 2:30 and exclude well-bred (Messenger descended) horses who did not. And second, they would admit a plethora of running mares who never trotted at all, but happened to be related to a standard animal. According to Wallace: In short, the union of the best two horses in the world cannot come in, but each can come alone with his sisters and his mother and his aunt. Practically these sisters and mother and aunts amount to nothing in the trotting families, for the origin of so many are in obscurity, but in the running families every scratch brings in a host of them.78 So too would Woodburn profit from time trials, the practice of timing horses against the clock rather than during official races against other horses. Because Woodburn didn’t race its horses, purportedly because of A.J. Alexander’s aversion to gambling, it tested them at home, against the clock.79 Wallace predictably denounced time trials as illegitimate, “tin cup” races.80 Brodhead represented not only Woodburn’s interests, but also his broader Kentucky brethren. During trotting’s early days, the blue-blooded R.A. Alexander had been an anomaly in both trotting’s plebeian landscape and his home state since established Kentucky Thoroughbred breeders disparaged the trotter as a “vulgar upstart.”81 R.A.’s breeding experiments (crossing cold-blooded horses with hotblooded Thoroughbreds) provoked further indignation amongst Thoroughbred purists. But as trotters gained value and with the nearby Cleveland, Ohio track, the first outside of the North, added to harness racing’s Grand Circuit, Kentucky breeders quickly saw trotters not only as a new source of revenue, but also as a way to re­ vitalize southern racing and Bluegrass breeding industries after the Civil War. Led by Brodhead (and backed by Woodburn’s still impressive financial clout), they formed a powerful constituency within the National Association of Trotting Breeders (NATB) promoting standards that would permit more horses with Thoroughbred blood into Wallace’s registry. They even organized their own stud book, funded in part by A.J. Alexander. Both the Brodhead and Wallace factions ultimately impacted trotting’s future. In 1879, the NATB implemented the 2:30 standard, including rules granting registry to certain ancestors and progeny of standard animals, but rejecting the controversial Pinafore rule.82 Time trials too became widely accepted. Brodhead and Wallace’s conflict reached its zenith over the ancestry of Maud S. (by Harold, out of Miss Russell), a horse bred at Woodburn who first broke the 2:10 mile. According to Woodburn’s records, Maud S.’s pedigree combined Hambletonian’s blood on her sire’s side with Thoroughbred flat racing sire Boston’s blood on her dam’s side. Boston was Lexington’s sire; his ancestry extends through Diomed. Wallace’s contestation of Maud S.’s grandam was thus two pronged: it undermined evidence that Thoroughbred bloodlines, besides Messenger’s, contributed to trotting prowess; it also cast doubts on Woodburn’s scrupulous record-keeping practices. In 1893, Brodhead finally took the matter to the newly formed American Trotting Register Association (ATRA), which confirmed Woodburn’s pedigree. Wallace, by that time, no longer held

70 Bone, Speed, and Blood the same sway over the sport. Two years earlier, the ATRA, its members embittered by Wallace’s obsessions and prejudices, had bought out Wallace’s holdings, assuming control of his Register, Monthly, and Yearbook.83 Wallace naturally decried his loss a conspiracy orchestrated by Brodhead.84 Portraits of Noted Horses of America of course appeared in 1874, several years before Wallace’s and Brodhead’s feud became so heated and so public. Yet Wallace had already commenced his assault on Woodburn farm’s breeding methods in volume one of his register (1871) by legitimizing only select Messenger families as trotting’s true heirs and progenitors that, in turn, challenged Woodburn’s sway over the breeding industry. The year 1874 saw the release of volume two of Wallace’ trotting register, replete with its author’s condemnations of Brodhead’s (and the Alexander family’s) ally Bruce and thinly veiled attacks on Woodburn. Hence the moment proved fitting for Woodburn’s response. Woodburn’s historical support of stud books, sporting journals, and image portfolios to promote its stock and operations lends credence to my theory that, whether through A.J. Alexander’s plentiful pa­ tronage or Brodhead’s explicit guidance in the selection of horses, Woodburn exploited Portraits of Noted Horses of America as an opportunity to affirm not only its, but also the Bluegrass region’s, rightful role in both the history of the American Thoroughbred and the future development of the American trotter.

A Comparative Framework Indeed a portfolio of photographs suited Woodburn’s scientific view of farm man­ agement and animal husbandry. Under R.A. Alexander, the farm instituted a number of innovative practices. The first was its careful documentation of pedigrees, kept in private record books and notated in catalogs that were published in conjunction with his annual bloodstock sales. R.A. carried his taxonomy of animals into Woodburn’s landscape as well, fencing separate paddocks and pastures, and building barns for different species and sexes. Farmers typically kept different types of animals together in inadequately fenced enclosures; thus animals frequently escaped and intermingled (and interbred) with neighboring stock. Such traditions were detrimental to largescale breeding enterprises such as Woodburn, which placed a high value on the purity of bloodlines. Following his separation of animals, R.A. also reshaped the farm landscape by clustering tenant houses, barns, paddocks, offices, and tracks together, depending on their relationship to horses (e.g., offices and tracks for trotters versus flat racers). Woodburn’s then revolutionary practices are now routine and can be seen, especially, throughout Kentucky. R.A.’s final innovation was to introduce what is now called “clockwork” on graded tracks laid at Woodburn. He trained his trotters by racing against the clock, not one another, a practice he was severely criticized for at the time—remember Wallace squabbled with Brodhead over time trials—that also became common.85 For A.J. Alexander and Brodhead, photography, the medium that, in 1862, notorious Harvard scientist Louis Agassiz predicted would “inaugurate a new era in our science,”86 offered another progressive approach to representing and systematizing Woodburn’s animals. Because of the close link between nature (the Real) and the image (as a mechanical transcription of the Real), photographs acquired the status of scientific data during the nineteenth century. The Schreibers’ preface supports such an understanding of the

Bone, Speed, and Blood 71 medium, in that, with their book, they target audiences made up of both the eminent sportsmen who would appreciate them as “the best pictures of horses ever produced” and students of equinology, or budding scientists of the horse. Such persons might be breeding theorists like Helm or Wallace or members of the broader scientific com­ munity, including naturalists and anatomists connected with the Academy of Natural Sciences and the various medical and veterinary schools in Philadelphia. Or even artists like Eakins, exploring equine anatomy by taking his Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts students to draw horses at slaughterhouses, photographing horses himself, and studying them through Schreiber photographs. The Schreibers clearly took great pains to add artistry to their images by excising handlers and tack (bridles, harnesses), touching up manes and tails, and enhancing vegetation so that their horse photographs appeared similar to oil paintings and fa­ miliar to audiences. But they emphasized their images’ immediacy—taken, not drawn from life.87 That photographs, in contrast to paintings or lithographs, expressed an alternative understanding of an animal is evident in comparing Troye’s painting of The Undefeated Asteroid (1864) with the Schreiber photograph of the horse (figures 1.6 and 2.11). Even allowing for the difference of ten years and the animal’s change in status, from a trim, fit racehorse to a heavier-bodied breeding stallion with a cresty neck, they barely look like the same horse. Asteroid evidently had a much longer head, more pronounced Roman nose, deeper shoulder, and more bone than how he is portrayed in Troye’s portrait. The Schreibers posit that their photographs are not only perfectly accurate, but actually exceed the Real, because “even visiting the stables of the eminent breeders and horsemen in the various States from which the collection was made, would not be so interesting and instructive.”88 With this statement, they purport that knowledge comes through viewing a horse in relation to others, which is made possible through their photographic portfolio. In so doing, they position their book within the traditions of eighteenth-century illustrated natural history treatises, amalgamations of science and art. In his Histoire naturelle, George Louis-Le Clerc, Comte de Buffon wrote that “It is necessary to compare [animals] with one another in order to learn to distinguish be­ tween them. … The result of this process of comparison will not only be a distinct knowledge of each animal, but also a general knowledge of all animals.”89 One dif­ ference between Buffon’s natural history and the Schreibers’ book, however, is that Portraits of Noted Horses of America gestures to the variety of trotting and Thoroughbred types, rather than to a typical or ideal representation of a species. And description, so intrinsic to Buffon’s natural history, is rendered in the Schreibers’ book not by hand (linked to the human mind), but by the mechanical (the photograph) along with a schema of taxonomic, abstract information based not on observed appearance or behavior, but on genealogy, ownership, and performance record. Still, an underlying principle of Portraits of Noted Horses of America is how the variety of types and breeds may be compared, then harnessed or combined to generate a superlative, trotting performer or breeding specimen, the embodiment of an ideal. For the purposes of comparative analysis, the Schreibers prefer the profile view, a state of “relative repose” when an animal form exemplifies its most typical and is best recognizable, undistorted “by momentary muscular contractions.”90 It is the formula “every horseman desires to examine a horse in when studying his various points of form” and appears throughout historical equine painting and naturalist illustration.91 Capturing such a moment with a camera, rather than a pencil or brush, however,

72 Bone, Speed, and Blood took a specialized photographer. Gerhard Schreiber emphasized that unlike build­ ings, animals were living, breathing entities. They required careful study and a knowledgeable eye. His brothers Henry and Conrad might work for three days, using exposure times of one second or less, to get one good picture of a horse.92 The profile mode of picturing synthesized a particular animal’s physique and disposition into a clear, cognizable representation, both distinctive and typical. Because motion photography was still in its infancy and would not be made public until four years later with the appearance of Eadweard Muybridge’s Scientific American photographs, the Schreibers effectively had to rely on the static pose. They could, however, have chosen to photograph their subjects from various angles or composited them into more narrative backdrops, following the evolution of natural history illustration and animal painting over the eighteenth through nineteenth cen­ turies.93 Audubon’s Birds of America Havell Edition plates are salient examples, with Buffonian descriptions of avian habitat and behavior attempted in visual form, within the constraints of depicting life-size species on approximately 26.5 × 39.5 inch pages.94 In Night Heron, or Qua bird (from Birds of America, Havell Edition, 1827–1838, plate 236), a hungry night heron, surrounded by marsh reeds and flowers, prepares to snatch a little frog. The horse of course was primarily a do­ mesticated animal, its habitat the stable, field, track, and road. Another example is Thomas Bewick’s General History of Quadrupeds (1790), a book organized by an animal’s proximity to human beings and thus begins with the horse. Here, Bewick maintains the formulaic profile view but weaves his equines into a social order through their settings.95 Behind the “Race-Horse,” a fit, but bad-tempered animal with pinned ears, braided mane, and banged tail, a race meeting takes place, with three horse and rider combinations galloping down a track and a bevy of more in the distance. The “Common Cart-Horse” is a shaggy, affable beast of burden distinct from, the backdrop tells us, the gentlewoman’s saddle mount. Portraits of Noted Horses of America is inherently tied to the social through its application to breeding sciences and horses manipulated to human benefit. But unlike Bewick or Audubon, the Schreibers had little need to distinguish animal types by purpose or habitat. They were more interested in determining similarities by form and pedigree, as charted in each photograph’s caption. Thus the Schreibers chose instead to draw attention to their animals’ physiques, by posing them in profile and setting them within minimal, generalized landscapes organized by the laws of linear perspective96 and likely achieved by compositing different negatives together. Such consistency created a re­ liable framework for anatomical comparisons. A reader can trace pedigrees throughout the Schreiber book and compare equine conformation and markings. The study of conformation was after all, Henry Helm declared, comparative anatomy.97 Hambletonian was described as a “great strong horse, with bone and substance” and a “fine, open trotting gait”98 (figure 2.2). His son George Wilkes evidences a similarly stocky body, heavy, shortish neck, homely head, and long back; he also trotted with a “long and easy way of going, striking well out behind and tucking his haunches well under him”99 (figure 2.12). All of Hambletonian’s progeny in Portraits of Noted Horses of America display physical characteristics similar to their sire. Jay Gould, Idol, Waverly, and Messenger Duroc even carried his white hind leg markings. Helm, however, distrusted the naked eye to make accurate assessments so devised a system of proportional analysis based on anatomical measurements. He measured lengths of thighs, forearms, legs, and

Bone, Speed, and Blood 73

Figure 2.12 Schreiber & Sons, George Wilkes. 1874. Albumen print. 5 1/2 × 8 in. From Portraits of Noted Horses of America, 1874. Courtesy Special Collection, Samford University Library.

cannons, and distances between hips and hocks of living trotters, forming if not a precise, a generalized schema to predict whether a horse is “well or ill adapted to the highest excellence.”100 On many occasions, Helm said, horsemen pronounced horses “long and far-reaching in a certain leverage,” when his own measurements revealed the contrary.101 Helm’s techniques paralleled other period uses of anthropometry such as French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon’s system combining bodily mea­ surements with photography to track and identify criminals. They also precipitated the role of anthropometric data in contemporary equestrian sports physiology and veterinary medicine. Portraits of Noted Horses of America contains no measurements beyond a horse’s height at the withers, calculated in hands. It nevertheless, through its familial groupings and mechanically rendered profile views, offered a better method than memory or direct observation to assess anatomical proportionality and quality. Portraits of Noted Horses of America further furnished visual evidence of inherited physical traits passed down from one horse to another. Horsepersons often afforded this knowledge more weight than breeding certificates.102

74 Bone, Speed, and Blood In addition to providing an unobstructed view of a horse’s body, the profile view also offers a relatively clear view of its head and face. The head, the external mani­ festation of mental traits, is therefore also important since a superior pedigree or correct bodily anatomy does not alone make a good horse. During the nineteenth century, theorists accorded mental traits known as temperament and pluck even more worth as they animated blood and bone. Together physical and mental traits, re­ inforced over time and habit, conditioned a horse’s nature, in the cart horse com­ bining to produce an animal fitting of slow, heavy drudgery and in the race horse an animal suited to spirited fleetness.103 Helm explains temperament as an expression of the nerve force or, in other words, the capacity for nervous vigor and action. It is akin to Wallace’s “trotting instinct” in a trotter, but not identical since a horse may have an instinct to trot, but not do so well because of flightiness or bad temper. Pluck consists of courage and tenacity. Helm locates both in the cerebrum, the area of the brain we now view as responsible for personality, spatial recognition, sensory pro­ cessing, cognition, and emotions.104 The best substantiation of temperament and pluck was, for Helm, by an individual horse’s observed behavior and performance, but pedigree also might foretell their presence with a family of proven performers. Physiognomy, the pseudoscience of determining mental character from physical characteristics, especially the head and face, also proved useful. Though no longer practiced as a formal science, physiognomic ideas still permeate the equine worlds today, with many horsepersons considering large, dark eyes, small ears, and refined noses with large nostrils signs of intelligence, stamina, and training capability, and close-set, small eyes, long ears, and small nostrils signs of obstinance, stupidity, and sluggishness.105 Horse physiognomy has origins in both eastern and western cultures. In China, horse physiognomy, or xiangma, re­ putedly originated with Sun Yang, called Bole, the best known of many horse ex­ perts active during the late Bronze Age. A variety of ancient and modern Chinese texts record xiangma principles for assessing a horse’s musculature, organs, tem­ perament, coloring, and even the patterns of wrinkles on its muzzle. For example, in good horses, the eyes should be full and bright; the ears small and sharp, like a trimmed bamboo tube; and the back short and square, with a large and raised spine.106 In early modern Europe, Giambattista della Porta’s De human physiog­ nomia (1584) and Johann Caspar Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy (1789) re­ vitalized and extended ancient Greek physiognomic practices, prioritizing their application to the study of human moral character and intellectual capacity, but with implications for animals. Della Porta juxtaposed human and animal heads to suggest that people who look like horses or lions are respectively noble or coura­ geous. Lavater ascribed attributes to animals based on head shape and color, often equating animal appearances, types, and behaviors to racialist, cultural hierarchies of human beauty and comportment. The horse’s nosebone is characteristically convex in capricious, courageous horses (comparable to a human aquiline nose); in vicious, idle horses, it is concave (comparable to a human snub nose). Grey horses are tender like light-haired people, while chestnuts, blacks, and bays are hardy, and sorrels treacherous.107 So telling are horses’ physical characteristics, Lavater pro­ nounced, “a separate treatise of physiognomy might be written on them.”108 A little less than a decade later, self-titled physiognomist and phrenologist Dr. Alfred E. Willis echoed Lavater’s proposition:

Bone, Speed, and Blood 75 The study of physiognomy in the animal kingdom [might, and ought, to] be pursued with great interest and benefit. Every horse-jockey and dealer in cattle ought to practice and study animal physiognomy. The spirit, activity and strength of a horse can be determined by its facial expression and physical development, just as easily as we can discover similar conditions in a human being.109 Because horses have panoramic, not stereoscopic vision, the profile view, with the head facing straight ahead or angled slightly towards the viewer, is ideal. Accordingly, views favored most by the nineteenth-century equine photographers are those that best present the head and face.110 In comparing Longfellow’s pose in the Schreibers’ stereograph versus the image in Portraits of Noted Horses of America, it is evident that the Schreibers selected a shot for their book that offered a more ad­ vantageous perspective of Longfellow’s head, befitting a horse known for his “re­ markably cool temperament.”111 In the stereograph, Longfellow turns his head at an angle, a view that reveals his white blaze, but makes his nose seem thick and un­ refined. In contrast, in the book’s photograph, Longfellow looks straight ahead, whereby his head appears more elongated and proportional to his elegant, statuesque physique (figures 2.8 and 2.6). Lexington’s representative photograph in Portraits of Noted Horses of America is less flattering than Longfellow’s with his profile pro­ minently displaying his cloudy eye and enlarged throatlatch, but likely chosen to both identify the horse and express his age and long career. Although in nineteenth-century physiognomic practice, physical features of horses’ heads did not translate explicitly to theories of temperament and pluck, there is a direct correlation between the characteristics physiognomy identifies as denoting superior dispositions to those seen in Portraits of Noted Horses of America’s well-bred specimens. The question the Schreibers’ book proposes is how horsepersons can best channel and strengthen these qualities, especially in the trotter, armed with the right body of visual evidence. In the end, reading Schreiber & Sons’ Portraits of Noted Horses of America within period contexts of breeding and representational strategies seems “natural,” just as George Stubbs’s earlier equine imagery straddled boundaries, his Anatomy of the Horse directed to artists, scientists, horse doctors, and gentlemen horse breeders.112 In the United States, however, while the artist Troye had closely studied Stubbs’s Anatomy to facilitate his handling of horse physiques and coloring, he remained indebted to the earlier English artist mainly for compositions and as a model of ar­ tistic self-invention, billing himself as America’s most eminent animalier to patrons desiring animal emblems to exalt their own social status. The Schreibers similarly find their own niche with animal subjects. But in using photography and directing Portraits of America’s images to the student of equinology, they reveal a new turn in the breeding industry, one that was more scientifically informed and sophisticated. Through its title, Portraits of Noted Horses of America hearkens both to earlier equine breed-specific publications like Troye’s Race Horses of America as well to more comprehensive animal portfolios like Audubon’s Birds of America, its first royal octavo edition produced in collaboration with Philadelphia lithographer James T. Bowen. Jennifer L. Roberts has argued that Audubon’s project can be read, with writings by Thomas Jefferson and the ornithologist Alexander Wilson, and exhibits by artist and museum owner Charles Willson Peale, as a rebuttal to Buffon’s theory of American degeneracy—where Old World species shrink and weaken in the New World—with examples of “vigor and bigness.”113 Though its plates measure only

76 Bone, Speed, and Blood 5 ½ × 8 inches each, perhaps Portraits of Noted Horses of America similarly defies Buffon’s theory through its delineation of the trotter, from its Old World ancestor, the imported English Messenger, towards a distinctly new American horse, the Standardbred, a strategically crafted combination of bone, speed, and blood.

Notes 1 John Hervey, The American Trotter (New York: Coward-McCann, 1947), 297. 2 Lucas Brodhead, letter to A.J. Alexander, December 1, 1871, quoted in Jonelle Fisher, For All Times: The Story of Lucas Brodhead (Lexington, KY: St. Crispian Press, 2002), 44. 3 Alexander Mackay-Smith, Race Horses of America, 1832–1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye (Saratoga Springs, NY: National Museum of Racing, 1981), 381. 4 John Hervey, Racing in America, 1665–1865 (New York: American Jockey Club, 1944), 2:316. 5 Schreiber & Sons, preface to Portraits of Noted Horses of America (Philadelphia, 1874). 6 For biographical information on the Schreiber family, see Greg Prichard, “The Schreibers: The Family and Business,” (unpublished manuscript, 2009), n.p. I am grateful to Mr. Prichard, Franz’s great great great grandson, for sharing his research on his family with me. Schreiber’s obituary credits him as the first in America to produce a photograph from a glass plate negative and with the invention of the hyalotype, a positive image on glass used for projection in magic lanterns and stereopticons, patented by the Langenheim brothers in 1850. “A Veteran Philadelphia Photographer [obituary of Franz Scrheiber],” American Journal of Photography 13, no. 137 (March 1892): 127; and “George S. Layne, “The Langenheims of Philadelphia,” History of Photography 2, no. 1 (January-March 1987): 39–52. If these claims are dubious, it is evident that Schreiber and the Langenheims were early experimenters with the glass plate process. Frederick Langenheim wrote to William Henry Fox Talbot in 1850 about their trials. An October 13, 1849 Scientific American article, “Pictures on Glass,” also mentions the Langenheims’ use of glass plate negatives. David R. Hanlon, “Prospects of Enterprise: The Calotype Venture of the Langenheim Brothers,” History of Photography 35, no. 4 (2011): 350. On Glover, see Ridgway Glover obituary, Philadelphia Photographer 3, no. 36 (December 1866): 371; and Paula Fleming, “Ridgway Glover, Photographer,” Annals of Wyoming: The Wyoming History Journal 74, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 17–27. 7 “A Veteran Philadelphia Photographer,” 128; and Prichard, “The Schreibers.” 8 Gerhard Schreiber, “Our Picture,” Philadelphia Photographer 10, no. 110 (February 1873): 61. Franz and Elizabeth Schreiber had eleven children in total: three daughters and eight sons. Prichard, “The Schreibers.” Franz Schreiber’s obituary states that he “leaves eight children, six of whom are stalwart sons and finished photographers.” “A Veteran Philadelphia Photographer,” 127. 9 Gerhard Schreiber, “Our Picture, The Last Load,” Philadelphia Photographer 9, no. 105 (September 1872): 333. 10 For a discussion of the case, see Prichard, “The Schreibers.” Schreiber & Sons initially sued the Charles Sharpless & Sons drygoods company for copyright infringement over use of its elephant and calf photograph on Sharpless company packing labels (Schreiber v. Sharpless, 6 Fed. 175, 1881). The Schreibers requested remuneration of one dollar for every label printed, a total of $15,000. Upon losing the case on a technicality—the court determined Sharpless’s employee Edward Thornton was the one responsible for obtaining the image—the Schreibers appealed. The court then awarded Schreiber & Sons $14,800.06 for the cost of remaining labels still in the Sharpless company’s possession (Schreiber v. Thornton, 17 Fed. Rep. 603, 1883). Thornton’s lawyers requested a new trial. After another case before the US Supreme Court was dismissed because Sharpless’s death absolved his liability (Schreiber v. Sharpless, 110 US 76, 1884), Thornton’s appeal progressed to the US Supreme Court, which reversed the earlier circuit court decision, this time, paradoxically, because Thornton was merely a representative of the Sharpless company and not ultimately responsible for obtaining the photograph (Thornton v.

Bone, Speed, and Blood 77

11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21

22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30

31

Schreiber, 124 US 612, 1888). The court instructed the verdict be set aside for further proceedings. No further cases appear to have gone forward. W. Douglass Paschall, “The Camera Artist,” in Thomas Eakins, ed. Darrell Sewell (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001), 241. Alan C. Braddock, “‘Our Yard Looks Something Like a Zoological Garden’: Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia, and Domestic Animality,” in A Greene Country Town: Philadelphia’s Ecology in the Cultural Imagination, eds. Alan C. Braddock and Laura Turner Igoe (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), 120–34. Susan Danly and Cheryl Leibold, Eakins and the Photograph: Works by Thomas Eakins and his Circle in the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 199. Photographs of pets alone especially signified animals as individuals. Katherine C. Grier, Pets in America: A History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 99. Schreiber, “Our Picture, The Last Load,” 333. Braddock, “Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia, and Domestic Animality,” 128–31. William Preston Mangum II captions Alix’s photograph, “That sweet little mare.” A Kingdom for the Horse: The Legacy of R.A. Alexander and Woodburn Farms (Louisville, KY: Harmony House, 1999), 170. Eakins portrayed Henry and an unidentified brother in a sculling picture, The Oarsmen (The Schreiber Brothers) (1874, Yale University Art Gallery). Prichard, “The Schreibers.” Danly and Leibold, Eakins and the Photograph, 199. William O’Donovan had been charged with the equestrian reliefs, but because of criticism surrounding American sculptors’ representations of horses, he shared the commission with Eakins, who did the horses. Cleveland Moffett, “Grant and Lincoln in Bronze,” McClure’s Magazine 5, no. 5 (October 1895): 420. The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden’s Samuel Murray and Thomas Eakins Papers at one point contained Schreiber photographs of Lexington, Australian, and Leopard (I have been unable to discover their current whereabouts). Index to the Inventory to the Samuel Murray and Thomas Eakins Papers at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, JH 65.177 (Washington, DC: Archives of American Art), 5. I thank Mr. Ray Schreiber for bringing these to my attention. On Schreiber photographs in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ Charles Bregler Collection, see Danly and Leibold, Eakins and the Photograph, 223. Eakins may too have used what appears to be a Schreiber photograph of Fairman Rogers’s mare Josephine for modeling and then painting May Morning’s off-side lead horse. See Josephine’s photograph in Fairman Rogers’s Manual of Coaching (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1900), plate XXX. Moffett, “Grant and Lincoln in Bronze,” 422–23. Margaret McHenry, Thomas Eakins, Who Painted (Orland, PA: self-pub., 1946), 97. Martin F. Schmidt, “The Kentucky Stock Book: A Search for the Elusive,” Filson Club History Quarterly 48, no. 3 (July 1974): 218–22. Campbell later sub-contracted out printing to Colin R. Milne’s shop in Louisville as evidenced by several extant prints listing Troye as painter, Campbell as drawer on stone, and Milne as printer. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 93–97, 417–19. Schmidt, “Kentucky Stock Book,” 222–23; and Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 97. “The Race Horses of America—Painted by E. Troye,” Turf, Field and Farm, May 14, 1866, 313, quoted in Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 278. The Havell edition is named after its engravers Robert Havell, Sr. and his son Robert Havell, Jr. Troye confusingly dated each photographic portrait not with the year of its production, but with the year he made the original painting of the horse. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 279. Ibid., 279–88. Issue two’s lack of memoirs was likely a result of cost. Troye printed these portraits larger than those of issue one, at 17 × 22 inches compared to 8 × 10 ¼ inches. Yet he may also have decided to forego printing memoirs and concentrate only on images since the stud book, which was nearing completion, already provided pedigrees. Ibid., 279.

78 Bone, Speed, and Blood 32 Mackay-Smith includes several sporting journal editors’ comments. Ibid., 283–288. 33 “Photographs of Horses,” Philadelphia Photographer 11, no. 127 (July 1874): 224. 34 Nor have I been able to trace provenance of extant copies that could identify original buyers. 35 Schreiber & Sons, preface to Portraits of Noted Horses of America. 36 “Pennsylvania Photographic Association [minutes],” Philadelphia Photographer 9, no. 101 (May 1872): 142. 37 Other examples include photographs of Lou Dillon (1860–1920) and Electioneer (1873) from the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints, and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library, New York Public Library Digital Collections, and a mixed media photograph of George Wilkes (1872) from a private collection. 38 Schreiber, “Our Picture,” 61. 39 Troye himself noted this goal in the preface to the first number of Race Horses of America: “In aspiring to be a successful breeder, quite as much attention should be paid to the conformation of the sire and dam as to their blood.” Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 285. 40 Mackay-Smith makes this connection. Ibid., 364, 379. 41 Melvin L. Adelman, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820–1870 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 55–63. Adelman states that Lady Suffolk pulled an oyster or butcher cart. Different accounts exist. Hervey says butcher cart. Hervey, American Trotter, 454. 42 Henry William Herbert, Frank Forester’s Horse and Horsemanship of the United States and British Provinces of North America (New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1857), 2: 123. 43 Adelman, A Sporting Time, 60–63. 44 Ibid., 67–68. 45 Currier & Ives, Flora Temple, and Princess: In their great match for $5000, over the Eclipse Course, L.I., June 23rd 1859., ca. 1859. Lithograph. New York: Published by Currier & Ives. https://www.loc.gov/item/2001699171/. 46 George P. Floyd, “The Story of Princess,” Wallace’s Monthly 18, no. 11 (January 1893): 1056–57. 47 Hervey, American Trotter, 73; and “The Belle of the Seventies,” Sports Illustrated, August 16, 1954, https://vault.si.com/vault/1954/08/16/the-belle-of-the-seventies. Lexington led the sire list from 1861–1875 and posthumously, in 1876 and 1878. Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 211. 48 Charles Backman was elected the first president of the National Association of Trotting Horse Breeders upon its founding in 1876. Hervey, American Trotter, 281. 49 Dennis Domer, “Inventing the Horse Farm,” Kentucky Humanities (October 2005): 10. 50 The first four volumes are all dedicated to R.A. Alexander. Fisher, For All Times, 110. After generating six volumes, Bruce sold the stud book to the national Jockey Club, which still publishes it today. William Spencer Vosburgh, Racing in America, 1866–1921 (New York: The Jockey Club, 1922), 46–47. On the Bruce brothers, R.A. Alexander, and the stud book, see also Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 277–78. 51 Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 235. 52 In February of 1865, towards the end of the Civil War, Alexander’s valuable young stallion Abdallah was stolen by confederate guerrillas during a raid on Woodburn Farm. Recovered several days after his theft, the exhausted horse died from pneumonia con­ tracted from being ridden across an icy river. Mangum, Kingdom, 89–90. 53 Dwight Akers, Drivers Up: The Story of American Harness Racing (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947), 141, 161; and Paul D. Siegel, How to Own Winning Standardbred Racehorses (Neenah, WI: Russell Meerdink Co., 2002), 133. 54 At that point, although no official mile record standard existed, Wallace settled on two minutes and forty seconds or better for inclusion in his register. J.H. Wallace, Wallace’s American Trotting Register, vol. 2 (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1874), 6. 55 Hervey, American Trotter, 281. 56 Established in 1879, the “Standard” had ten rules. Some were more complicated than the 2:30 and better mile time, e.g., rule number four: “Any horse that is the sire of one animal with a

Bone, Speed, and Blood 79

57 58 59 60 61

62

63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

record of 2:30 or better; provided he has either of the following qualifications: a record himself of 2:40 or better; is the sire of two other animals with a record of 2:40 or better; has a sire or dam, grandsire or grandam that is already a standard animal.” Ibid., 282–83. Messenger was imported to the United States in 1788. On Messenger, see J.H. Wallace, Wallace’s American Trotting Register, vol. 1 (New York: Geo. E. Woodward, 1871), 24–32. The Morgan became an official breed with the founding of its registry in 1894. Calvin D. Hanson, “Trotting Cousins,” The Morgan Horse, September/October 2010, 62–64, 68–73. Hervey, American Trotter, 217-19. Apart from his pedigree, Seely’s American Star’s ap­ pearance and gait also sowed confusion since with a refined head and extremities, fine, soft coat, and little knee action, he neither looked nor moved like a Morgan. Longfellow and Enquirer belonged to Woodburn’s immediate neighbors, John Harper and General Abe Buford, respectively. Leamington belonged to Aristides Welch. Though Welch’s Erdenheim stud farm was located in Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, Welch was a good friend of Kentucky breeder Hal Price (H. P. McGrath), who owned McGrathiana Farm in Fayette County, Kentucky. Aristides, by Leamington and named after Welch, won the inaugural Kentucky Derby in 1875. Gregory A. Hall, “Kentucky Derby Countdown,” Louisville Courier Journal, April 30, 2015, https://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/ horses/triple/derby/2015/04/30/countdown-kentucky-derby-aristides/26657501/. Donna Landry, “Habsburg Lippizaners, English Thoroughbreds and the Paradoxes of Purity,” in Horse Breeds and Human Society, eds. Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 28. Richard Nash also discusses the geohumoralist theories of hot blood and cold blood hybrids in “A Perfect Nicking Pattern,” HumAnimalia 10, no. 1 (Fall 2019): 37. Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld describe the often fluid and historically, geo­ graphically, and culturally determined concepts of breed in relation to formations of human and animal identity. Guest and Mattfeld, introduction to Horse Breeds and Human Society, 1–9; and Guest and Mattfeld, “Breed: Introduction,” HumAnimalia 10, no. 1 (Fall 2019): 1–4. On purity, fixity, hybridity, and racialized identity in the Thoroughbred, see Nash, “A Perfect Nicking Pattern,” 27–28, 34–35. Ann Norton Greene, Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 90. Greene, Horses at Work, 93–94; and Margaret E. Derry, Horse in Society: A Story of Animal Breeding and Marketing Culture, 1800–1920 (Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 12. On the running horse and horses metonymically identified by purpose, see Nash, “A Perfect Nicking Pattern,” 36–37. Wallace, Trotting Register, 2:36, 48. Hervey, American Trotter, 288–89. John H. Wallace, Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development (New York: self-pub., 1897), 465; and Guest and Mattfeld, introduction to Horse Breeds and Human Society, 3. Hervey, American Trotter, 279-80; and Fisher, 109–10. Wallace developed the first volume of his register from a haphazard collection of trotting pedigrees added to the end of his Thoroughbred stud book. Wallace, Trotting Register, vol. 2, 38. Ibid., 46. Hervey, American Trotter, 296. Fisher, For All Times, 110. H.T. Helm, American Roasters and Trotting Horses (Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1878), 26, 28–29, 79. Helm’s book originally appeared as installments in the National Livestock Journal in 1876. Lucas Brodhead, quoted in John H. Wallace, “The Pinafore Standard,” Wallace’s Monthly 5, no. 11 (December 1879): 832. Wallace, “The Pinafore Standard,” 833. On the standards, including the Pinafore Standard, see also Wallace, Horse of America, 525–29.

80 Bone, Speed, and Blood 79 Wallace, Horse of America, 526. 80 Fisher, For All Times, 110–12. 81 Hervey, American Trotter, 295; Mangum, Kingdom, 21; and Mackay-Smith, Race Horses, 221. 82 Hervey, American Trotter, 284–85. 83 Fisher, For All Times, 114–15; and Hervey, 288–89, 296. 84 Wallace, Horse of America, 536–40. 85 Domer, “Inventing the Horse Farm,” 3–12. 86 Louis Agassiz to Lodowick H. Bradford, December 22, 1862, Letter Books, 2:99, Agassiz Papers, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University, quoted in Ann Shelby Blum, Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 265. 87 Schreiber & Sons, preface to Portraits of Noted Horses of America. 88 Ibid. 89 George Le Clerc, Comte de Buffon, Histoire naturelle (1749) IV: 130, quoted in Alex Potts, “Natural Order and the Call of the Wild,” Oxford Art Journal 13, no. 1 (1990): 22. 90 Potts, “Natural Order,” 22. 91 Nicola Gould, “‘What is Meant by this System?’ Charles Darwin and the Visual Reordering of Nature,” in Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts, eds. Diana Donald and Jane Munro (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 123; and Schreiber & Sons, preface to Portraits of Noted Horses of America. 92 Schreiber, “Our Picture,” 61; and Schreiber, “Our Picture, The Last Load,” 333. 93 On this evolution, see Potts, “Natural Order,” 16–18; Blum, Picturing Nature, 4–17; and Diana Donald, Picturing Animals in Britain, 1750–1850 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 33–63. 94 Audubon’s Ornithological Biography supplemented his prints with extended descriptions of habitat, appearance, and behavior. Jennifer L. Roberts has argued that Audubon’s insistence on actual size, created without a mathematical system of proportional trans­ lation, often creates an oddness of perspective with the birds effectively containerized and pushed to the foreground of the picture plane, rather than integrated into their sur­ roundings. Transporting Visions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014), 81–90. 95 Potts, “Natural Order,” 15–20; and Blum, Picturing Nature, 15–17. 96 Blum, Picturing Nature, 6. 97 Helm, American Roadsters, 74. 98 Wallace, Horse of America, 234. 99 Ibid., 285. 100 Helm, American Roadsters, 61. 101 Ibid., 74. 102 Ibid., 76. 103 Wallace, Wallace’s American Trotting Register, vol. 2, 47. 104 Helm, American Roadsters, 57–60. 105 Oscar R. Gleason, Gleason’s Horse Book and Veterinary Adviser: Comprising History, Breeding, Training, Breaking, Buying, Feeding, Grooming, Shoeing, Doctoring, Telling Age, and General Care of the Horse (Chicago: M. A. Donohue & Co., c. 1892), 106. 106 Robert E. Harrist, Jr., “The Legacy of Bole: Physiognomy and Horses in Chinese Painting,” Artibus Asiae 57, no. 1/2 (1997): 136, 139–40. 107 Johann Caspar Lavater, Essays on Physiognomy: designed to promote the knowledge and the love of mankind (London: William Tegg and Co., 1858), 221–23. 108 Ibid., 220. 109 Alfred E. Willis, Illustrated Physiognomy (Chicago: Cameron, Amberg, and Co., 1879), 12. 110 R.W. Shufeldt specifically focuses on fish with panoramic vision that are best shown in profile in “The Physiognomy of Fishes,” Nature-Study Review 14 (1918): 137–138. 111 Helm, American Roadsters, 57. 112 Potts, “Natural Order,” 24. 113 Roberts, Transporting Visions, 103–04.

Bone, Speed, and Blood 81

Bibliography “A Veteran Philadelphia Photographer [obituary of Franz Schreiber].” American Journal of Photography 13, no. 137 (March 1892): 127–128. Adelman, Melvin L. A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820–1870. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986. Akers, Dwight. Drivers Up: The Story of American Harness Racing. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1947. Blum, Ann Shelby. Picturing Nature: American Nineteenth-Century Zoological Illustration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Braddock, Alan C. “‘Our Yard Looks Something Like a Zoological Garden’: Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia, and Domestic Animality.” In A Greene Country Town: Philadelphia’s Ecology in the Cultural Imagination, edited by Alan C. Braddock and Laura Turner Igoe. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016. 118–140. Danly, Susan and Cheryl Leibold. Eakins and the Photograph: Works by Thomas Eakins and his Circle in the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994. Derry, Margaret E. Horse in Society: A Story of Animal Breeding and Marketing Culture, 1800-1920. Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 2006. Domer, Dennis. “Inventing the Horse Farm.” Kentucky Humanities,October 2005: 3–12. Donald, Diana. Picturing Animals in Britain, 1750–1850. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. Fisher, Jonelle. For All Times: The Story of Lucas Brodhead. Lexington, KY: St. Crispian Press, 2002. Fleming, Paula. “Ridgway Glover, Photographer,” Annals of Wyoming: The Wyoming History Journal 74, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 17–27. Floyd, George P. “The Story of Princess,” Wallace’s Monthly 18, no. 11 (January 1893): 1055–1058. Gleason, Oscar R. Gleason’s Horse Book and Veterinary Adviser: Comprising History, Breeding, Training, Breaking, Buying, Feeding, Grooming, Shoeing, Doctoring, Telling Age, and General Care of the Horse. Chicago: M. A. Donohue & Co., 1892. Gould, Nicola. “‘What is Meant by this System?’ Charles Darwin and the Visual Re-ordering of Nature.” In Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts, edited by Diana Donald and Jane Munro. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009. 119–140. Greene, Ann Norton. Horses at Work: Harnessing Power in Industrial America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Grier, Katherine C. Pets in America: A History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Guest, Kristen and Monica Mattfeld. “Breed: Introduction.” HumAnimalia 10, no. 1 (Fall 2019): 1–4. Guest, Kristen and Monica Mattfeld, eds. Horse Breeds and Human Society. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. 27–49. Hall, Gregory A. “Kentucky Derby Countdown.” Louisville Courier Journal, April 30, 2015. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/sports/horses/triple/derby/2015/04/30/countdownkentucky-derby-aristides/26657501/. Hanlon, David R. “Prospects of Enterprise: The Calotype Venture of the Langenheim Brothers,” History of Photography 35, no. 4 (2011): 339–354. Hanson, Calvin D. “Trotting Cousins.” The Morgan Horse. September/October 2010, 62–73. Harrist, Robert E. Jr. “The Legacy of Bole: Physiognomy and Horses in Chinese Painting.” Artibus Asiae 57, no. 1/2 (1997): 135–156.

82 Bone, Speed, and Blood Helm, H.T. American Roasters and Trotting Horses. Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1878. Herbert, Henry William. Frank Forester’s Horse and Horsemanship of the United States and British Provinces of North America. 2 vols. New York: Stringer & Townsend, 1857. Hervey, John. The American Trotter. New York: Coward-McCann, 1947. Hervey, John. Racing in America, 1665-1865. 2 vols. New York: American Jockey Club, 1944. Inventory to the Samuel Murray and Thomas Eakins Papers at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. JH 65.177. Washington, DC: Archives of American Art. Landry, Donna. “Habsburg Lippizaners, English Thoroughbreds and the Paradoxes of Purity.” In Horse Breeds and Human Society, edited by Kristen Guest and Monica Mattfeld. Abingdom: Routledge, 2020. 27–49. Lavater, Johann Caspar. Essays on Physiognomy: designed to promote the knowledge and the love of mankind. London: William Tegg and Co., 1858. Layne, George S. “The Langenheims of Philadelphia.” History of Photography 2, no. 1 (January-March 1987): 39–52. Mackay-Smith, Alexander. Race Horses of America, 1832-1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye. Saratoga Springs, NY: National Museum of Racing, 1981. Mangum, William Preston II. A Kingdom for the Horse: The Legacy of R.A. Alexander and Woodburn Farms. Louisville, KY: Harmony House, 1999. McHenry, Margaret, Thomas Eakins, Who Painted. Oreland, PA: self-pub., 1946. Moffett, Cleveland. “Grant and Lincoln in Bronze." McClure’s Magazine 5, no. 5 (October 1895): 419–432. Obituary of Ridgway Glover. Philadelphia Photographer 3, no. 36 (December 1866): 371. Paschall, W. Douglass. “The Camera Artist.” In Thomas Eakins, edited by Darrell Sewell Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001. 239–255. “Pennsylvania Photographic Association [minutes].” Philadelphia Photographer 9, no. 101 (May 1872): 142. “Photographs of Horses.” Philadelphia Photographer 11, no. 127 (July 1874): 224. Potts, Alex. “Natural Order and the Call of the Wild.” Oxford Art Journal 13, no. 1 (1990): 12–33. Prichard, Greg. “The Schreibers: The Family and Business.” Unpublished manuscript. 2009. Richard Nash, “A Perfect Nicking Pattern,” HumAnimalia 10, no. 1 (Fall 2019): 27–43. Roberts, Jennifer L. Transporting Visions. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. Rogers, Fairman. Manual of Coaching. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1900. Schmidt, Martin F. “The Kentucky Stock Book: A Search for the Elusive.” Filson Club History Quarterly 48, no. 3 (July 1974): 217–227. Schreiber, Gerhard. “Our Picture, The Last Load.” Philadelphia Photographer 9, no. 105 (September 1872): 332–333. Schreiber, Gerhard. “Our Picture.” Philadelphia Photographer 10, no. 110 (February 1873): 61. Schreiber & Sons. Portraits of Noted Horses of America. Philadelphia, 1874. Shufeldt, R.W. “The Physiognomy of Fishes.” Nature-Study Review 14 (1918): 137–146. Siegel, Paul D. How to Own Winning Standardbred Racehorses. Neenah, WI: Russell Meerdink Co., 2002. “The Belle of the Seventies.” Sports Illustrated, August 16, 1954. https://vault.si.com/vault/ 1954/08/16/the-belle-of-the-seventies. Vosburgh, William Spencer. Racing in America, 1866-1921. New York: The Jockey Club, 1922. Wallace, J.H. Wallace’s American Trotting Register. Vol. 1. New York: Geo. E. Woodward, 1871. Wallace, J.H. Wallace’s American Trotting Register. Vol. 2. New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1874.

Bone, Speed, and Blood 83 Wallace, John H. “The Pinafore Standard.” Wallace’s Monthly 5, no. 11 (December 1879): 831–833. Wallace, John H. Horse of America in His Derivation, History, and Development. New York: self-pub., 1897. Willis, Alfred E. Illustrated Physiognomy. Chicago: Cameron, Amberg, and Co., 1879.

3

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well: The Rodeo Cowgirl in Early Twentieth-Century Real Photo Postcards

Rodeo contestant Vera McGinnis (1892–1990) gallops her horse across a bleak, windswept arena in an anonymous snapshot from the 1920s (figure 3.1). She per­ forms a rodeo trick known as the “slick saddle stand,” where the rider balances atop the saddle while the horse runs at full speed.1 In the distance, a photographer raises his camera to capture the duo on film. One of his shots will likely become a “Real Photo Postcard” (RPPC), an image printed from a film negative directly onto heavy, photo-sensitive paper and cut to size, like that by Walter Scott Bowman (1865–1938) showing McGinnis competing in the cowgirls’ standing race at the 1914 Pendleton Round-Up (figure 3.2). Throughout the first decades of the twentieth century, ama­ teur and professional photographers produced thousands of RPPCs of people, pets, scenic views, and rodeo, a sport then experiencing a meteoric rise.2 Rodeos sprang up across the western United States and Canada, as well as in Chicago and New York, attracting both locals and tourists. American troupes also toured England, Europe, and Asia. Bowman, Ralph Russell Doubleday (1881–1958), John Addison Stryker (1883–1974), and other less prolific photographers exhaustively documented rodeo’s thrills, producing shots of contestants bucking out powerful broncs, wrestling mighty steers to the ground, and executing dangerous, acrobatic riding maneuvers.3 Aided by new photographic technology, they shot in the arena by day, printed in makeshift hotel darkrooms by night, and hawked souvenir cards in the grandstands the fol­ lowing day. They also sold RPPCs by mail order.4 In 1908, Barry Bros. advertised a “fine book of Frontier Views showing Steamboat in action, other bucking horses and scenes at Frontier times—42 characteristic views mailed anywhere for 25 cents.”5 These cards fueled interest in the sport and the culture of the American West, as well as tourism to such towns as Cheyenne, Wyoming and Pendleton, Oregon.6 They also transformed rodeo women like McGinnis into international celebrities. Women’s participation in highly physical contests challenged conventional codes of femininity. In response, rodeo culture often stressed cowgirls’ natural grace, beauty, and kinship to animals, qualities that countered their alleged masculine character­ istics and contributed to their popularity with spectators and the press. Rodeo photographs reveal this tension. In rodeo’s early years, RPPCs and other photographs record women like McGinnis participating in all types of events, from rough-stock to trick riding. But as rodeo organizers limited women’s involvement and later banned them entirely from sanctioned competition, women became further relegated to passive, static, and sexualized images reflecting their roles as contract performers and rodeo queens.7 Professional rodeo today, governed by the Professional Rodeo DOI: 10.4324/9781351034340-4

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 85

Figure 3.1 Unknown photographer, Vera McGinnis Trick Riding (on white horse). Black and white photograph. National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, Fort Worth, Texas.

Cowboys Association (PRCA), is largely dominated by men as participants and or­ ganizers, with only barrel racing open to women.8 McGinnis, a top “cowgirl,” competed in rodeo between 1913 and 1934.9 In many ways, she epitomized the ideal rodeo cowgirl: a beauty who, borrowing the words of Wild West show and rodeo personality Lucille Mulhall, “could handle a horse well.”10 Slim, blonde, stylish, and with striking good looks, she became known for her inventive, hand-made costumes and is credited as one of the first rodeo cowgirls to wear tailored pants.11 Yet McGinnis also won recognition as a gritty competitor and expert equestrian. In addition to competing in rodeo, she homesteaded, jockeyed Thoroughbred racehorses, showed jumpers, guided trail horses, and worked as a stunt double in Hollywood Westerns. McGinnis’s 1974 autobiography, Rodeo Road: My Life as a Pioneer Cowgirl, details her first introduction to rodeo, notable com­ petitions, friendships, rivalries with other female competitors, and travels throughout the West and abroad. It also describes her relationships with the horses she rode and owned throughout her life, such as Scotty, her grey trick mount she rides in figure 3.1. Human–animal relationships are central to rodeo, a sport that has been described as a form of social theater staging a struggle between humans and nature, and be­ tween the wild and tame.12 Rodeo RPPCs in turn express these relationships that, depending on the event, range from humans’ subjugation of animals to cooperation with them.13 In her classic text, Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and

86 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well

Figure 3.2 W.S. Bowman, Cowgirls Standing Race. ca. 1914. Photographic postcard. National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, Fort Worth, Texas.

Tame (1982), Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence situates this struggle between man (cowboys) and nature (rodeo animals) based on 1970s fieldwork conducted in PRCA sanctioned, male-only rodeos.14 But women’s historical involvement in rodeo means that RPPCs throughout the first half of the twentieth century capture women’s, as well as men’s, manifold relationships with animals.15 RPPCs are not always transparent, neutral documents. Rodeo’s photographic re­ cord across the twentieth century parallels the mainstream sport’s patriarchal whitewashing as it increasingly sidelined women and ethnic minorities.16 In so doing, it supports a vision of a West, a world in which ideas of conquest, domestication, and control—part and parcel of settler colonialism—became closely aligned with white manhood.17 Early rodeo itself often spatially reproduced such a racialized fiction, segregating “Indians in the ‘Indian village’ and Indian parade” and cowgirls and cowboys in the arena.18 Rodeo RPPCs broadly upheld this division by featuring predominantly white cowboy and cowgirl contestants. Exceptions, however, do exist with postcards from the early twentieth century documenting Black and Indigenous riders, including Black bulldogger Bill Pickett and bronc riders Jesse Stahl and George Fletcher, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) bronc rider Thom Three Persons, and Sioux bronc and relay rider Princess Red Bird.19 Evidence of Black rodeo cowgirls is more scarce. Sources identify “Mrs. Sherry,” who appears in both a 1921 Doubleday postcard of

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 87 five female trick riders performing hippodrome stands20 on a Wichita Falls, Texas rodeo track (Cowgirls Headed for the Round-Up. Triangle Ranch) and a 1917 Bowman postcard of a Pendleton cowgirl group (Cowgirls Ready for the Bucking Contest), as African American.21 Ongoing discrimination by mainstream rodeo drove the development of alternative rodeos and organizing bodies celebrating Black, Native American, and LGBT riders and culture. These, like the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, the Indian National Finals Rodeo, and the World Gay Rodeo Finals continue today. Mainstream rodeo has as well become more inclusive.22 Yet how, during rodeo’s early period, did rodeo postcard imagery of womenanimal relationships shape public understandings of the cowgirl that, for a moment, ruptured a gendered model of the West, if not its racial framework? To answer this question, this chapter examines RPPC representations of women and horses, and their attendant relationships, as women primarily competed in saddle bronc, relay, and trick riding events. It moves beyond the photograph’s evidentiary nature to consider postcards not only as records of rodeo performances, but also as cheap and easily consumable material objects. Who period viewers were and how they used these objects is indicated, to some degree, by writing on extant postcards.23 Formulaic greetings and rodeo lingo such as “Wish you were here,” “Let’Er Buck,” and “We sure saw some ‘hoss’ riding about a week ago at the ‘Rodeo’” suggest that adults purchased souvenir cards to post to friends and relatives back home during trips out West. Names signal that children also collected cards of favorite female rodeo personalities. “Aunt Millie” gifted her nephew “Alvin” one of Doubleday’s Famous Bucking Horse Picture souvenir folders24 featuring cowgirls Fox Hastings, Mabel Strickland, Pearl Gist, and Josephine Wicks, while a brother informed his sister that “this [card depicting Prairie Rose Henderson standing next to her horse in a bridle and saddle dripping with silver heart-shaped conchos] is yours sis.” Alvin or the anonymous sister may have traded cards among other rodeo enthusiasts. Many people also, evidenced by many cards’ trimmed and torn edges, pasted them into albums. And while album making has been recognized as a predominantly female pastime, men and boys certainly created albums as well.25 Disseminated and con­ sumed en masse across genders and age levels, early twentieth-century RPPCs thus offered a highly accessible alternative to Western fine art and illustration that con­ ventionally limited its female subjects to submissive and ornamental roles. RPPCs instead frequently represented women as equestrians in action, their identities in­ extricably connected to the animals with whom they appeared.

Cow(horse)girl Much has been written about the American cowgirl, from her early history on the western frontier to her contemporary presence in rodeo. Joyce Gibson Roach’s The Cowgirls (1977) traces the cowgirl from the nineteenth-century cattle driver to range wife to dime novel heroine to screen siren, while Teresa Jordan’s Cowgirls: Women of the American West (1982) collects oral histories of female ranchers and rodeo pro­ fessionals.26 Mary Lou Lecompte’s Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes (1993) and Renée M. Laegreid’s Riding Pretty: Rodeo Royalty in the American West (2006) focus exclusively on female rodeo participants, as professional athletes, sponsor girls, and queens.27 Together these texts challenge simplistic, sex­ ualized stereotypes of cowgirls as infantilized “girls in fringed felt skirts or big-eyed

88 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well sweeties in tight jeans and high-heeled boots” by offering more complex pictures of independent, resilient, and working women.28 Yet all rely on the term “cowgirl” presumably for its expediency and fluidity, and because no better alternative has thus far emerged to describe women with various lived and fictionalized experiences of western life and traditions. Lecompte writes that “as long as the term cowboy re­ mains standard, cowgirl will probably do likewise.”29 Though the pejorative “boy” was often used to distinguish enslaved and free Black cattle workers from their white drover, trader, or stock raiser counterparts on the western frontier, cowboy never­ theless became, by the second half of the nineteenth century, the common label for Black (who made up likely a quarter of the cowboy population during the nineteenth century), Native American, Mexican, white, and mixed-race male ranch hands and cattle herders who adapted the traditions, costume, and vocabulary of Spanish and Mexican vaqueros.30 The origin of “cowgirl” is more muddied. Female cowpunchers or hands on the American frontier were generally referred to as “cowboy girls.” The first widespread use of cowgirl emerged only in the late nineteenth century, “tightly interwoven” with “Wild West shows and a growing rodeo circuit.”31 Soon it became the standard descriptor for adult female performer-contestants in Western-themed entertainment and sports as well as ranch women and female cattle workers in the American West. Sutured, however, to the growing legacy of the white cattle baron frontier, “cowgirl,” like “cowboy,” lost much of its connections to a racially diverse heritage that was central to the identities of some female rodeoers, ranchers, Wild West performers, and Western dime novel heroines.32 In this chapter, I use cowgirl interchangeably with rodeo professional, athlete, contestant, participant, and performer. My use of the term reflects how early rodeo women came to identify themselves and how rodeo organizers employed the termi­ nology, designating women’s-only bronc riding, trick riding, and racing as “cowgirl” events, although women sometimes competed in open contests against men.33 Separate “cowgirl” categories legitimized female contestants as comparable, if not exactly equivalent, to male cowboy contestants. Consequently, journalists at the first Calgary Stampede in 1912, for example, reported on women’s and men’s contests, interviewing and photographing both male and female participants as serious athletes.34 In another instance, the press credited cowgirls’ western origins and skills, heralding their coming to Cheyenne Frontier Days, like their cowboy counterparts, from “the great cattle ranges of the limitless west.”35 Separate categories, however, also undercut cowgirls by differentiating them from cowboys according to hierarchies of ability. Women’s contests usually operated under different rules. In bronc riding many women chose to ride hobbled, the practice of tying the stirrups underneath the saddle with rope to secure the legs, rather than the more difficult “slick” style saddle bronc cowboys rode. Women also used two reins (held in one hand), rather than one as male riders did, and had to hang on for eight seconds instead of ten. And, they often rode gentler broncs who bucked less powerfully. The result was that cowgirl contests were sometimes seen as easier, adapted for women’s inferior athletic cap­ abilities. Cowgirls were also accused of inauthenticity. A Wyoming newspaper publicizing the 1924 Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo declared that the cowgirl was a pure invention: she “did not exist before the wild west festivals produced her and she does not exist today, except at this and smaller celebrations.”36 The pervasive in­ terchange of performers between Wild West shows, rodeo, film, and vaudeville

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 89 furthered perceptions of the cowgirl as a costumed actor performing staged embel­ lishments of Western skills, unlike the cowboy, a genuine heir of frontier life. I also use cowgirl because it reflects the implicit link between woman and animal important to my reading of rodeo postcards. Jeannette Vaught has written that both “cowboy” and “cowgirl” invoke a “tri-species centaur of human, cow, and horse,” where human and animal are co-constitutive.37 The horse, though unnamed, is im­ plied. Horses are central to the history of cattle ranching, with cattle drives and round-ups conducted on horseback. The lone cowboy atop his trusty steed roaming the open range has become a staple of imagination. In this scenario, the horse offers the cowboy friendship, mobility, and freedom. Horses, however, also provided western women with a means of independence. The view from “the back of a horse” seen by female ranchers, homesteaders, and cowhands made the world seem wider.38 The horse became an equalizer of sorts, allowing women in the West to work alongside men outside the home, roping, branding, and riding fence.39 The horse also propelled women into rodeo. Indeed women like Bertha Kapernick Blancett and Bonnie McCarroll, who spent their youths on horseback on Colorado and Idaho ranches, parlayed riding skills into rodeo competition. Blancett made her first ap­ pearance in bronc riding at Cheyenne Frontier Days in 1904; McCarroll joined the rodeo circuit, mainly as a bronc and relay rider, upon marrying bulldogger Frank McCarroll in 1912.40 For other women with non-ranching backgrounds, horsemanship also facilitated their rodeo careers. Norwegian immigrant Tillie Baldwin (née Anna Matilda Winger) had no prior experience in riding or ranching but she quickly jettisoned life as a New York hairdresser after seeing women practicing on horseback for Western films. Learning to ride at a stable owned by friends, Baldwin soon mastered enough tricks for vaudeville and Wild West shows before transitioning to rodeo.41 McGinnis first rode at age three on a burro named Croppie at her family’s cattle ranch in New Mexico, then continued to do so as a teenager upon her family’s return to her birth state of Missouri.42 Following graduation and a stint working in Los Angeles as a movie extra, she settled into an office job in Salt Lake City, entering her first rodeo relay race solely by accident when a rodeo came to town and she wanted to impress a handsome cowboy.43 For the relay, her old riding memory proved handy, because even though she broke two teeth and lost another in her debut, she found the rodeo: a ringside seat to paradise. … The air was pungent with the reek of horse sweat, dust, fresh manure, and cigarette smoke. I’d never experienced anything like it, and yet, it seemed familiar. I closed my eyes and listened to the horses champing their bits, the creak of leather and the clink of steel spurs, all blended with the joking, bantering voices of the riders. … I soaked up the scene greedily, for it satisfied both my hunger for action and my need for earning a living. My search was over.44 Horsemanship offered McGinnis a means of financial independence doing something she found exciting and satisfying. She honed her equestrian expertise over the years in trick riding, bronc riding, Thoroughbred breeding and racing, and show jumping. She also trained her equine partners with whom she had much success. McGinnis agreed to travel to Asia with a Wild West show only because the organizer promised she could take her horse, who she “wouldn’t have gone a step without.”45 Relationships

90 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well with horses proved critical to her livelihood and identity, as they have been for most successful rodeo cowgirls throughout history.46 Consequently, while rodeo’s activ­ ities are imbricated in the legacy of cattle ranching and the longstanding fascination with western frontier myths, it is the horse and horsemanship that have in many ways defined the rodeo cowgirl’s identity and career longevity. Early rodeo postcards ex­ press the centrality of these relationships between woman and horse through re­ presentations of different forms of riding and examples of horsemanship, including keeping one’s seat astride bucking broncs and performing tricks at full gallop. It is to these postcards depicting cowgirl athletes and animals in motion that I now turn.

Rodeo Cowgirls in (Arrested) Motion As soon as cowgirls began appearing at rodeos, photographers recorded their ac­ tivities, printing them on postcards that they sold to locals and tourists at rodeos such as Oregon’s fall Pendleton Round-Up. Initiated in 1910, the Round-Up’s popularity grew quickly. 15,000 people watched the Saturday championship contests in 1911 and the following year, grandstand seating expanded to accommodate 21,000.47 Bowman, a local photographer with a studio in Pendleton, usually attended the Round-Up where he documented contestants, including women riders such as McGinnis, Blancett, and McCarroll who regularly appeared there from the rodeo’s inception until 1929, the last year women’s events appeared on the program.48 In 1914, Bowman photographed McGinnis in one of her earliest Pendleton appear­ ances, competing in the Roman standing race.49 McGinnis is perched atop her equine pair, taking the lead on the rail at a blistering speed. The Roman race was lauded as one of the most exciting, highly competitive events, with its women competitors “out for blood.”50 In 1915, Bowman photographed Blancett in her turn in the arena on the bronc Eagle (figure 3.3). Whereas little is known about Eagle, his powerful, athletic movement epitomized the Round-Up’s high-quality bucking stock.51 Blancett was already an audience favorite, having won the ladies championship title the year be­ fore.52 As depictions of women participating in competitive sport, Bowman’s rodeo RPPCs comprise one part of a much larger body of photography documenting the rise of female athletic culture and physical education in the early twentieth century. During that time, women’s sports grew exponentially, a result of the expansion and commercialization of leisure practices, and of changing attitudes about gender roles, women’s sexuality, and physical culture. Women typically competed in the amateur ranks, in club, community, collegiate, and industrial games. Less frequently, they joined semiprofessional teams. The late teens and twenties also saw the emergence of elite, internationally known sports sensations like tennis players Helen Wills and Suzanne Lenglen, and swimmers Annette Kellerman, Gertrude Ederle, and Sybil Bauer.53 Photographs of these female athletes encompass a broad range of compo­ sitional types, including studio portraits, team photographs, and action shots. Rodeo RPPCs similarly follow these conventions, with views of dynamic arena activities including trick riding, Roman racing, and bronc riding produced alongside static portraits of individual cowgirls and cowgirl groups in the studio and outdoor settings. In Ralph Doubleday’s studio portrait of Mabel Strickland, a champion trick rider, roper, and minor film actress, the blonde, blue-eyed beauty sits on a bench, hands in pockets and legs crossed, wearing her signature boots inlaid with playing

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 91

Figure 3.3 W.S. Bowman, Bertha Blancett on Eagle, Pendleton Round-Up. ca. 1920. Photographic postcard. Photographic Study Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 2005.023.1.

card symbols and an iconic black cowboy hat, whose size, some have argued, made her appear more petite and girlish (Mabel Strickland, ca. 1925; figure 3.4).54 Doubleday became well-known known for his shots of cowgirls.55 His outdoor portraits often portray rows of genial women with hats doffed wearing competition gear. In one, Ruth Roach rests her arm on Florence Randolph’s shoulder, a gesture of supportive camaraderie that belied cowgirls’ fiercely competitive natures and some­ times hostile rivalries (Cowgirls at the Triangle Ranch Rodeo, ca. 1920). If studio and outdoor portraits humanized and feminized cowgirls, action scenes made cowgirls seem herculean, especially when battling powerful broncs. In Bowman’s RPPC of Blancett and Eagle at Pendleton, Blancett attempts to ride out the horse who thrusts her so hard out of the saddle her heel comes up in her stirrup and her skirt swirls out behind her. She looks downward at the animal’s plunging head and open mouth—signs of exertion—and reaches toward the horn, struggling to maintain her position. Grabbing the horn, also known as “pulling leather,” meant elimination, but another RPPC of the same ride, by photographer Thomas “Lee” Moorhouse, provides a clearer view of Blancett’s properly positioned hands.56 One holds the reins, while the other floats free, and Blancett took first prize in the cow­ girls’ bronc riding that year.57 The judges awarded third place overall to Princess Red Bird because of a disastrous ride when she’d drawn the bronc Dempsey who “plunged with such wicked jumps that she was forced to grab the horn,” proving to one journalist that she was “not

92 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well

Figure 3.4 Ralph R. Doubleday, Mabel Strickland Sitting on Bench in Studio Pose. ca. 1925. Dry plate negative. Ralph R. Doubleday Rodeo Photographs Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 79.026.1966.

equal to her white competitors.”58 Bowman photographed her during a more suc­ cessful ride at the Round-Up, on what was likely the final day of competition, aboard Blue Blazes, possibly named for its blue roan coloring (figure 3.5).59 As the horse twists upwards, head dipped between its knees, Princess Red Bird maintains her grip on a furled American flag, which she characteristically waved during her rides, both a theatrical gimmick influenced by Wild West acts and a practical tactic for proving to the judges she wasn’t pulling leather. Rodeos displayed the American flag extensively, flying atop flag posts in the arena, draping parade routes, and decorating grand­ stands. Cowboy and cowgirl contestants and Native American contingencies also carried flags in parades and showground ceremonies. In these contexts, the American flag broadly symbolized patriotism and proclaimed the rodeo, with its frontier re­ enactments, an iconic American institution. For Native American flag bearers,

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 93

Figure 3.5 W.S. Bowman, Princess Red Bird on “Blue Blazes.” Riding in the cowgirl’s bucking contest—winning 3rd money—Round-Up. 1915. Photographic postcard. The University of Oregon Libraries, Special Collections and University Archives, Charles Wellington Furlong papers, PH244_0057.

however, it also emblematized the historical violence of US militarism and forced assimilationist policies. Gifted during treaty negotiations and taken as war trophies, American flags also appear in many examples of reservation-era Plains Indian ma­ terial culture—ledger drawings, beadwork, and even Fourth of July celebrations—where, it has been posited, they operated as complex visual codes in Native Americans’ ongoing struggle for survival.60 Princess Red Bird’s patriotic display of the American flag, coupled with her choice of professional alias echoing both colonialist stereotypes of Indigenous women and traditions of “playing Indian,” surely functioned similarly: by simultaneously highlighting her otherness and pro­ fessing her belonging to the arena where cowboys and cowgirls tamed the wilds of the frontier. In the fall of 1915, with Europe embroiled in World War I and nationalist sentiment high, the flag perhaps resonated even more deeply with Round-Up atten­ dees who gave Princess Red Bird a standing ovation.61 John Addison Stryker’s postcard Riding High on Easy Money (1920; figure 3.6) documents a more extraordinary bucking spectacle with Rose Smith, a rider who competed throughout the late teens and 1920s, and a dapple grey horse suspended in the air above a row of awestruck, mostly male onlookers.62 But because Stryker shot this scene from below his subjects, lying flat on the dirt and directing his camera skywards, his image presents its viewers with an even more dramatic, exaggerated perspective.63 We see the wide under-brim of Smith’s Stetson and the billowing folds

94 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well

Figure 3.6 John Addison Stryker, Riding High on Easy Money. 1920. Photographic postcard. Collection of the author.

of her divided skirt as she is propelled away from the saddle by the animal’s cork­ screwing motion. The angle of Smith’s body aligns with Easy Money’s straightened front legs, creating a diagonal vector that increases the photograph’s strong verti­ cality. Lifting off as if from springs in its hooves, the bronc hovers several feet in the air. Smith stays on through sheer balance. Erwin E. Smith, a western photographer from Bonham, Texas, lauded Stryker’s photograph as “the best I ever saw of a bronc in action.”64 His assessment is notable since such stupendous bucking horses were usually reserved for male riders. Men consequently predominate in RPPCs of the highest soaring broncs. Comparable shots of women are rarer since not only were less

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 95

Figure 3.7 Erwin E. Smith, Female Bronc Rider [Ruth Roach] at a Texas Rodeo. ca. 1920–1926. Gelatin dry plate negative. Erwin E. Smith Collection of the Library of Congress on Deposit at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, LC.S6.567.

athletic horses deemed more suitable for women, they also allowed women to pose stylishly, showing off colorful costumes and pretty faces for the camera and crowd, as Ruth Roach did at a Texas rodeo in the 1920s (Erwin E. Smith, Female Bronc Rider [Ruth Roach] at a Texas Rodeo, ca. 1920–1926; figure 3.7). Hobbling rules may also have prevented women from riding more unpredictable or higher flying horses, as while tying the stirrups under the saddle may have helped a rider stay on, it created a greater risk in being drug by a horse from a foot caught in the stirrup during a fall. Another example of a formidable bucking scene with a female rider is Doubleday’s shot of Smith on the bronc Jiggs at Pendleton in 1918 (figure 3.8). Doubleday, unlike Stryker, photographed his subjects with a tripod placed at a height just below eye level. Yet whether the horse from this perspective displays a less spectacular, less lofty buck than Easy Money, Jiggs makes up for it with intensity, jarring Smith loose with powerful shoulder and sharply plummeting head. Wild West show and film star Will Rogers once said that Doubleday always came up “with the exact likeness of the animal.”65 Because Doubleday’s photographs are not portraits per se—little of the animals’ markings or even their physiques are particularly visible when shown twisting or arcing and covered by a saddle or rider’s dangling legs—Rogers perhaps used “likeness” to mean a mani­ festation of an animal’s disposition, conveyed through movement and expression, which often helped bolster its reputation on the rodeo circuit. To emphasize movement,

96 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well

Figure 3.8 Ralph R. Doubleday, Rose Smith on Jiggs, Pendleton Round-Up. 1918. Photographic postcard. The Denver Public Library, Western History Collection. Z-638.

Doubleday favored a high degree of residual blur, of churning dust (for example, by Jiggs’s hind hoof) or a switching tail as a horse bucks or gallops down a track, produced by his older model Graflex portrait camera with a maximum shutter speed of 1/500 sec. over the crisper frames (still with some blur) of newer, higher speed models advertised explicitly for fast-spaced sports photography.66 Rodeo photography is of course in­ debted to Eadweard Muybridge’s seminal experiments capturing animal movement as a sequence of images unfolding in time. Yet Doubleday’s allegiance to blur in part defied Muybridge’s serial approach by collapsing space and time into a single image, the frame arresting the moment, the blur suggesting time’s passage. Muybridge’s photographs are nonetheless useful in thinking about Doubleday’s in­ tentional blur as a means of expressing rodeo’s energy and animals’ athletic prowess. They are also valuable in considering the cultural risks of photographing women and horses in motion. In only one instance did Muybridge photograph an adult female model and horse together (“Tom” walking, saddled; female rider nude, Plate 583, Animal Locomotion, 1887; figure 3.9).67 It has been well-documented how, after Muybridge’s copyright dispute with Leland Stanford over ownership of photographs depicting Stanford’s racehorses, he left California for Philadelphia to embark on his encyclopedic Animal Locomotion (1887) under the sponsorship of the University of Pennsylvania and members of Philadelphia’s scientific and artistic communities. For this project, Muybridge engaged student athletes from the all-male university as male models, chosen for their “earned records in their respective athletic disciplines,” whom he photographed “while walking, running, leaping, wrestling, boxing, fencing,

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 97 military exercising, rowing, and while polo, baseball and racquet playing.” He enlisted artists’ models, a professional dancer, and women from Philadelphia society to pose for images of “Lawn Tennis, dancing, and other exercises of muscular action and graceful movement.”68 Activities divided along gender lines and purpose, Janine A. Mileaf has argued, with male models asserting the scientific nature of Muybridge’s research by demonstrating strength and athleticism and female models suggesting its aesthetic applications by often imitating poses from academic art.69 Yet Muybridge’s equestrian plates showing a nude woman riding Tom the horse don’t obey such clear cut distinctions. On the one hand, she rides aside, the style that was still de rigeur for middle- and upper-class women of the period and that reflects the history of and application to pictures of elegant women mounted sidesaddle on horseback. On the other, the woman is shown nude like the men, partaking in the athletic activity of riding. But here I must add a caveat: Tom walks. He doesn’t trot, gallop, or jump hurdles as the men’s horses do. Perhaps this is because Muybridge’s model is not a proficient equestrian. Period riding manuals such as Elizabeth Platt Karr’s The American Horsewoman (1884) included diagrams on holding the double rein with one hand and stressed the importance of the correct heel position, “a little lower than the toes,” and the torso, with the “backbone in a direct line with that of the horse, at a right angle with it.”70 The woman’s right hand clasps the curb rein, her left pulls back on the snaffle rein creating an unnatural twist in her torso, and her heel comes up in the stirrup as she urges Tom forward. His head raises up in response, distraught at her tight grip on the reins. Though one cannot discount Muybridge’s model’s nudity—how uncomfortable!—as a factor in her position, her awkwardness results in an ambiguous portrayal of human–animal motion that neither fully de­ monstrates athletic mastery nor artful grace.

Figure 3.9 Eadweard Muybridge, “Tom” walking, saddled; female rider nude, Plate 583. From Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements, 1872–1885, published under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, plates printed by Photo-Gravure Company. Philadelphia, 1887.

98 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well Beyond Muybridge’s female model’s discomfiting nudity or limited equestrian skills, conventions of propriety also likely played a role in restricting Tom to the gait of the walk. To represent a nude female body engaged in more energetic activity on horseback would have intensified the scene’s inherent sexuality and perhaps even crossed the line into titillation, which could not be offset by the aside position’s decorum. It is conceivably why Muybridge photographed only one nude female rider, choosing instead to represent his other nude and draped female bodies in more ac­ ceptable artistic undertakings: walking, dancing, and pouring water. Muybridge’s general avoidance of picturing women’s athletic vigor may reflect contemporary debates about the effects of exercise on the female body as women’s participation in competitive sports grew during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Doctors and scientists clashed over the harm of unleashing “nonprocreative desires identified with male sexuality and unrespectable women” versus the benefit in channeling dangerous “sexual energy into wholesome activity.”71 Equestrianism proved especially troubling because of its physical contact between a female human and formidable nonhuman animal body: not only could injury come to a woman’s body through contact between her and the horse, but the intimate nature of the contact between sentient beings, unlike between woman and tennis racquet or bi­ cycle, increased the potential of amplifying interspecies sexual energy and perverting it. Kim Marra has described this intercorporeal dynamic as deeply queer. Following Elspeth Probyn’s and Eve Sedgwick’s work, she plumbs queer’s etymological mean­ ings of transitive movement—“across from side to side,” or in opposition to the proper or expected course—to cast equestrianism as a tangle of slippages, in which normative boundaries, “between human and animal; between different races, gen­ ders, and classes; [and] between self-control and lassitude, propriety and transgres­ sion,” are prone to slip and blur through the activity’s sensuality, unpredictability, and public spectacle.72 Yet equestrianism’s dangerous liaisons were often assuaged by arguments that equestrianism enhanced a woman’s attractiveness and health through riding in the open air and developing muscles for erect body carriage. Further, by keeping women moderately fit and mentally engaged, riding could ward off female maladies such as hysteria or depression that, paradoxically, strenuous exercise was allegedly thought to induce. Karr’s manual proclaimed that: There is no cosmetic nor physician’s skill which can preserve the bloom or freshness of youth as riding can. … Not only is health preserved and life prolonged by exercise on horseback, but, in addition, sickness is banished, or meliorated, and melancholy, that dark demon which haunts even the most joyous life, is overcome and driven back to the dark shades by whence it came.73 In reality, while exercise in nature benefited female equestrians’ physical and mental fitness, restrictive clothing and sidesaddles often compromised their health and selfsufficiency. Fitted riding habits made of dark, heavy, woolen fabric coupled with sitting in an unnatural, awkward position generated overheating and discomfort and made women much more reliant on grooms for mounting and dismounting.74 Riding’s advantages were also reserved for a certain class of women: those with the means to own a horse and those who rode for leisure and pleasure, usually “insulated from public reproach by wealth and status.”75 Muybridge’s nude equestrienne, in contrast, was probably an artist’s model, a working-class woman. To be depicted

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 99 nude on a horse, even riding aside, only amplified her unrespectability and hence Muybridge’s female rider photographs’ immorality. Of course, female rodeo participants rode clothed, but they rarely came from wealth or privilege. They rode for money, not leisure, competing professionally on a circuit outside the frame of conventional, domestic life. They also rode astride, not aside. A Los Angeles Times reporter observed of cowgirls at a Havre, Montana rodeo that “There was no nonsense about sidesaddles. During the few seconds of time in which they were on the bronchos’ backs, they rode a-straddle.”76 Riding astride in clothing that transgressed gender codes—first divided skirts, then bloomers, and later trousers—heralded even greater risks of lascivious indecorum, of friction against the proper order. In 1905, “The Lancer,” a presumably male columnist for the Los Angeles Times, condemned the equestrienne who rode astride as unwomanly and indecent: The woman does not live who can throw her leg (a thousand pardons!) over the back of a horse without profaning the grace of femininity; or grasp with her separated knees the shoulders of her mount without violating the laws of good taste; or appear in the cross-saddle with any semblance of dignity, elegance, or poise.77 The Lancer’s language reveals his apprehensions about astride riding’s incendiary eroticism, a style that positioned seat, genitals, and legs against the horse’s body. But if only an imagined scenario triggered the Lancer’s alarm, rodeo RPPCs made it material by transforming the live rodeo—a mise-en-scène of the exotic West where disruptions of gender norms and sexual mores were already somewhat permissible in the clearly demarcated space of the arena—into objects that fit in one’s hands, their subjects readily available to admire, identify with, fantasize about, and possess. In Riding High on Easy Money, we—and by we, I mean a multiplicity of viewers—practically look up the back of Smith’s ballooning skirt, from Stryker’s low angle, as her seat separates from the saddle’s cantle. In the postcards of Blancett atop Eagle, the visible physicality of the responsiveness between human and animal bodies is deeply impressive and exciting, even erotic in its palpability for a viewer as Blancett, wearing a divided skirt, grips the horse’ flank as Eagle throws her out of the saddle. In Bowman’s shot, she struggles against Eagle’s jarring action that thrusts her body higgledy-piggledy; in Moorhouse’s image of the same ride, she has disciplined her body into greater synchrony with the horse, the curve of her torso mirroring Eagle’s arced form as the animal projects its body skyward. The eroticism of riding a bronc astride was further heightened by its implied vio­ lence. Doubleday’s Billie Buck Objects to Bonnie McCarroll Riding, Pendleton, Round-Up (1922; figure 3.10) and Bowman’s Bonnie McCarroll Thrown from Silver (1915; figure 3.11) make violence palpably explicit. Doubleday captures McCarroll leaping from Billie Buck as the horse falls on its right haunch as its hind legs slip out from underneath it. The snubbers close in to make sure McCarroll is not crushed. In Bowman’s shot of McCarroll catapulted from Silver, she somersaults towards the ground, head hovering perilously above the dirt and legs flailing in the air. Such visual depictions of violence—to both woman and horse—violated prescribed under­ standings of women’s compassionate, caring relationships with animals. Male re­ lationships with animals, epitomized by rodeo cowboy contests, in contrast, were

100 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well

Figure 3.10 Ralph R. Doubleday, “Billie Buck” Objects to Bonnie McCarroll Riding, Pendleton, Round-Up. 1922. Photographic postcard. Bruce McCarroll Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. RC2006.076.106-1.

Figure 3.11 W.S. Bowman, Bonnie McCarroll Thrown from Silver. 1915. Miniature photo­ graphic postcard. Collection of the author.

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 101 appropriately underpinned by violence, manifested by the rough treatment of live­ stock. In Lawrence’s analysis of modern rodeo, she characterizes the cowboy–horse relationship as a contest of power in which the cowboy prevails by making the horse do his bidding. This is accomplished by controlling the horse with cruel bits, heavy saddles, and roweled spurs. Bronco-busting, or even the wild horse race where men attempt to saddle an unbroke horse and ride it across the finish line, intensified the cowboy’s brutal methods, breaking animals physically and in spirit by often beating them into submission, with the goal of impressing on them the notion of human supremacy.78 In these scenarios, animals are envisioned not as partners or equals, but as subordinates, “put on earth,” as one of Lawrence’s informants described, “for the express purpose of man’s use” and abuse.79 To compensate for women’s transgres­ sions in rodeo contests, in events such as bronc riding that violated their more ben­ evolent natures and thus destabilized the rightful relationships between male contestants (cowboys) and animals, the press often publicized the unusual pets of rodeo women, like the coyote who became Prairie Rose Henderson’s pal at Cheyenne one year, or Ruth Roach’s burro, tame goose, and small, spotted pig.80 Lawrence’s cowboy informant eschewed the sentimentality of petkeeping, declaring: You like an animal “because you win money on him.”81 Although Bowman’s RPPC of McCarroll’s fall from Silver presaged women’s prohibition from rodeo rough-stock events by fourteen years, it reveals how a “tangle of memory, projection, and fiction may unfurl from a single, compelling snapshot.”82 Rodeo enthusiasts often mistake Bowman’s 1915 picture for one representing McCarroll’s death, which occurred from a fall at the Round-Up in 1929. Confusion centers around the barely detectable bit of rope hanging from the McCarroll’s sad­ dle’s left stirrup, which may or may not be a broken hobble. McCarroll, known as a daredevil, typically rode slick, and here, Lecompte argues, she is “thrown free and clear of the horse.”83 But in 1929, she rode hobbled, according to that year’s rodeo rules. Upon falling she became tangled in the hobble ropes and was drug and trampled to death.84 It is precisely, however, through this ambiguity that Bowman’s image gained currency and reproductive (reprint) value as either a visual document of McCarroll’s demise or an eerie and even romantic portent of her fate, along with, more broadly, women’s involvement in professional rodeo. In 1926, after a series of women’s grave, but non-fatal accidents in rodeos across the country, the Pendleton Round-Up committee restricted women’s bronc riding to paid exhibitions. In 1929, following McCarroll’s highly publicized death, it terminated all women’s bronc riding and restricted remaining women’s events to exhibitions. Pendleton would not feature women’s competition again until the introduction of barrel racing seventy-one years later.85

Woman/Horse/Together More rodeos followed the Pendleton Round-Up’s lead—banishing bronc riding and turning other cowgirl contests into exhibition acts—after Marie Gibson’s 1933 death, the result of a skull fracture sustained when her bronc collided with another horse at the Idaho Falls Rodeo.86 Yet other factors besides fatalities also contributed to a subsequent decline in women’s participation in the sport: shrinking rural populations with fewer women skilled in livestock wrangling and riding; new regulating bodies that ignored or purposefully sought to exclude women; and disputes over dwindling

102 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well prize money and contracts.87 With the onset of World War II, high fuel and feed costs made it difficult for women to support multi-horse relay strings. They also forced rodeo organizers to cut back on livestock contracts. With insufficient stock, organi­ zers curtailed women’s events first.88 After the war, in 1948, a group of women formed the Girls Rodeo Association (GRA; it became the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association in 1981) to provide more competitive opportunities for women.89 The GRA was also a response to the marginalization of female athletes effected by the rise of rodeo queens and sponsor girls. In 1910, the Pendleton Round-Up in­ troduced its first queen, Bertha Anger, who won her crown through public ticket sales and rode on a float during the Round-Up’s Westward Ho! Parade. Rodeo queens initially came from local towns, rather than the rodeo circuit. They embodied com­ munity values instead of possessing horse or livestock skills.90 Over subsequent decades, however, charm, looks, and horsemanship became integral to queens’ identities, as rodeo’s reigning royalty introduced events on horseback, “whipping across the arena and over ground rails” in daredevil fashion.91 In 1927, the Pendleton Round-Up selected one of the loveliest rodeo cowgirls, Mabel Strickland, as its queen. Unlike the first generation of cowgirls who often dressed like men, save their divided skirts and beribboned curls, Strickland was a vision, a “blazing Sirius” among the stars, with chicly coiffured hair, luminous blue eyes, and a knack for posing with panache.92 Along with queens, contract acts such as Bonnie Gray jumping her horse King Tut over cars and corporate sponsor girls also became popular attractions, performing horsemanship displays and competing for prizes in pageants.93 These transformations in rodeo, channeling women into promotional and entertainment roles, mirrored contemporary national sports trends. With expanding commerciali­ zation and media coverage, sports organizations increasingly promoted women’s beauty, sexual appeal, and entertainment value. Within the rodeo community, good looks often garnered suspicion and accusations of being “chippies”94—pretty faces who slept their way to the top. They nonetheless helped extend the careers of women such as Strickland and McGinnis in an era that valued appearance and style as much as athletic ability. As true contests wherein women competed in open contests with prize money de­ clined, trick riding continued to flourish as a contracted exhibition act, especially on the eastern rodeo circuit. Its continued popularity indicates that it reified the nature of appropriate feminine spectacle. In returning to the photograph of McGinnis trick riding on Scotty, we see cowboys gazing at McGinnis as she performs her trick (figure 3.1). This image invokes Laura Mulvey’s classic theory of to-be-looked-at-ness where the woman is on display, her appearance visually coded for strong hetero-erotic impact.95 Similar is a photograph of Strickland performing a one-foot stand in a trick riding contest, her left foot in the hippodrome strap, her right leg bent gracefully behind her, with toes pointed upwards. Her all-white costume, which matches her white horse, is that of an acrobat or ballet dancer: a form-fitting, high-necked blouse, tights, and fluttering sash (Mable [sic] Strickland Trick Riding, ca. 1915; figure 3.12). Trick riding put beauty and poise on show, conforming to gendered assumptions about women’s natural grace, forged through a special kind of relationship with animals. Closer to nature—instinctual and emotional—woman has been thought to have a stronger bond with beasts. The press extolled the sight of Gray and King Tut swimming together in a lake after track workouts, she holding on to his tail as he pulled her into shore: “Warm evenings they may be seen there—Bonnie in a red swimming suit with long dark hair

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 103

Figure 3.12 Unknown photographer, Mable [sic] Strickland Trick Riding. Pendleton Ore. Association Photo. ca. 1915. Photographic Study Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 2005.041.

flying and Tut looking like an aristocrat in his sleek palomino suit.”96 Gray explained that living near her horses, doing activities together, caring for them, loving them, and looking after their wants, ensured their reciprocal love and cooperation.97 Throughout her autobiography, McGinnis also expresses love for her animals. About a Thoroughbred Enchanter, she writes: “I knew this horse could love me as Croppie my burro had. … He was my darling … and I loved him instantly.”98 In certain instances, her human-to-human hetero-romantic and erotic desires are displaced onto horses. She describes meeting her future husband Earl and his horse, Black Bud, for the first time: “‘Oh! He is beautiful,’ I gasped. I loved him on sight. His coat was so black it had highlights and his body was practically perfect. … ‘It must be wonderful to ride a horse like that.’ ‘I’ll let you ride him,’ Earl said.”99 McGinnis’s narrative portrays her love for her geldings, unlike human men, as constant and true, further reinforcing the theory of the “potentially passionate relationship though to exist between women and horses.”100 In trick riding, the excitement of a sensual woman-horse affinity is intensified through the visual of a lithe, fit body, garbed in, as the years progressed, increasingly racier, more form-fitting costumes in concord with her mount. It is a vision that invokes comparisons with the historic amazon or female circus performer—alluring eques­ triennes who publicly exhibited mixtures of sex, bravery, and beauty, and were con­ sidered not quite fully masculine or feminine.101 This connection was not lost on a Cheyenne Frontier Days visitor who referred to female rodeo contestants as “attractive Amazons,” or to a New York Times reporter who declared that the cowgirls at the first Madison Square Garden Rodeo “rivaled any circus lady who ever pirouetted on horseback.”102 Indeed many American cowgirls moved frequently between the rodeo,

104 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well circus, and Wild West show. In 1923, McGinnis traveled with the Ringling BrothersBarnum and Bailey Circus when money was tight, riding in the opening parade, trick riding in the Wild West act, and releasing pigeons in famed equestrienne Ella Bradna’s Act Beautiful, which featured Bradna’s bareback acrobratics, white horses and dogs, and colored pigeons that were released to alight on the horses’ backs.103 Rodeo trick riding drew on circus performances, particularly the bareback routines, where barearmed women wearing corsets, ruffled skirts, and tights—costumes akin to ballet dancers—performed dangerous tricks.104 But if these riders’ allure was embodied in the volatile balance between graceful femininity and indecency, so too did it revolve around the spectacle, according to Kari Weil, of woman and animal—together—in danger. Weil describes the example of Adah Mencken, the American actress who took Paris by storm in 1866, performing the role of Léo in a play that imitated the plotline of Lord Byron’s Mazeppa, where the title character is “punished … by being tied naked to the back of a fiery, black horse.”105 Playing the role of a man, Mencken appeared clearly a woman, attired in a revealing, sheer pink body stocking. Of the climactic scene, French critic Théophile Gautier wrote: “If his foot slipped, if a plank broke, the audience would have the pleasure of a seeing a superb beast and a charming woman of intelligence, level-headedness and bravery, break together in bits. What greater at­ traction could one imagine?”106 Such a vision is echoed in postcards of female rodeo trick riders performing such dangerous tricks as the Russian or Suicide drag, where a rider drapes her body across the saddle of a galloping horse. Part of Mencken’s attraction stemmed not just from her titillating performances in the theater, but her behavior outside of it. Her official biography noted “her suc­ cesses … fighting buffalo in Texas, being captured by Indians, and marrying a se­ quence of husbands,”107 activities that paralleled the real lives of many rodeo women, who, born on ranches, grew up working cattle or homesteading. In so doing, they transgressed normative gender barriers that Mencken, as an American actress (with spurious mixed-race ancestry and Jewish blood), was also able to cross. In nineteenth-century France, the amazone, epitomized by Mencken, came to embody class anxieties, debates about racial purity, and excessive sexuality, all factors in concerns over the decline of French masculinity and culture. While American cul­ ture’s controversies over female equestrianism did not correspond directly to French debates, the restriction of women from competitive rodeo events, protests over astride riding, and the intense deliberations in media and athletic organizations about the nature of female athletes demonstrated similar cultural anxieties over sexuality and spheres of gender. The female trick rider could be said to assuage many of these anxieties through her acrobatic grace on a trained steed; the female bronc rider or bulldogger could not overcome them since these events, pitting woman against the beast, required a level of brutality allegedly at odds with women’s countenance. And in reality, Gautier’s comment about the allure of watching an exceptional woman and powerful animal potentially break to bits begs the question of the actual peril of such theatrical spectacles. Of course, circus acrobats doing backflips while blindfolded, Mencken tied on the back of the horse, or McGinnis standing atop the saddle are dangerous acts, involving unpredictable animals. Many women suffered terrible injuries from falls. Yet when acrobatics are practiced, repeated, and perfected on highly trained horses, the risk is allayed. The erotics of violence are thus cir­ cumscribed within what is at least imagined to be a safer, co-dependent partnership, unlike that of bronc riding.

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 105 Cowgirls usually traveled with their own trick horses since trust and familiarity were and still are key to this discipline. By 1927, the year McGinnis purchased Scotty, she had become an expert trick rider, her specialty event, and had trained a series of animals for rodeo performances. She was game to ride almost anything and work with a horse until she got it right. Although she does not specifically discuss rodeo, animal theorist Vicki Hearne’s analysis of training and the relationships it fosters between horses and riders is useful in considering the differences between the forms of interspecies communication involved in different rodeo events. In discussing the asymmetry involved in the horse–rider relationship (an asymmetry in that the rider is always asking the horse to perform specific, usually somewhat artificial movements or behaviors), Hearne compares the reliable trail horse to the bronc. The trail horse may be said to come to realize that it doesn’t know people, but gets or “fathoms” them, while the broncs are those who are “temperamentally unable to tolerate that stance”—they don’t know and won’t or can’t fathom humans.108 The trail horse thus adapts to its rider even if its knowledge of the rider may not make sense, but the bronc, cued by a tightened strap and open chute, attempts to dislodge that human from its back. Broncs continue to possess reputations as outlaws or rebels against society. They are crazy, mean, rough, and the buck is bred into them.109 The rider, in this case, is “judged on the amount of force exerted over the animal, and the horse is evaluated on the degree of wildness exhibited in opposing the contestant.”110 I would liken the trick horse to the trail horse, in that it must be a solid, predictable partner, running straight at a steady pace and staying focused in the presence of cheering fans, bands playing music, and surprise distractions.111 It must also constantly adapt to the changing positions of its rider, who is most often encumbering the horse’s natural rhythm and balance, like McGinnis’s famous under-the-belly trick that necessitated timing the patter of hooves just right: Starting from one end of the arena, Cowboy broke into a fast gallop, I swung down on his left side, put my right foot under his body into the right stirrup, then by timing the patter of his flying feet and legs so as to escape them, I swung my body under his belly and resumed my seat in the saddle before reaching the other end of the arena.112 Other stands, vaults, and drags, like the Cossack Drag, where the rider puts the right foot in a leather loop and hangs by the ankle off to the near side of the horse with arms hanging down and trailing in the dirt while the left leg is held in the air (a trick that is said to come from a pose the Cossacks struck while heading into battle to protect themselves)113—all demand significant trust between horse and rider. Gray emphasized that Domino, her trick horse, was intelligent and obedient, as one misstep on his part would mean a fall. “With all his speed, with all the noise and confusion going on around him … he never forgets his stuff and, while spirited, is easy to control at all times.”114 Sometimes horses served dual roles like Hugh and Mabel Strickland’s white Arabian Buster who Mabel used for trick riding and Hugh for roping.115 Within the sport of rodeo, one of the most significant changes over the course of the last century has perhaps been the development of selective scientific and costly bloodline breeding programs to produce bucking stock, as well as cowboy and cowgirl mounts; even so, the theoretical division between outlaw broncs and trained animal partners remains intact.116

106 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well McGinnis’s memoir gives short shrift to the effort it must have taken to develop that trust with many of the horses that she acquired. It was she, however, who most frequently trained her trick mounts, usually quite quickly because of impending performances. About her Palomino Shoney, McGinnis writes that he was gentle, but green and stupid: “It took a lot of work to teach him much of anything; yet there nothing to do but ‘make the best of him.’”117 Buttons, in contrast, “learned quickly and had the desire to please,” aided by the fact that she and Buttons liked each other, so that for two shows a day during her winter in Hawaii, he “worked perfectly.”118 Cowboy, a bay and her favorite, took less work as he was an experienced performer, but she was forced to sell him after a tour of Asia when she couldn’t afford to pay his travel home to the states.119 And Scotty, although certainly beautiful, gentle, and well-broke, never learned to canter slowly. McGinnis’s movements sometimes un­ settled him so much that he would bolt. Once, her leg got caught in a strap and she was drug, re-injuring her bad knee. Consequently, that winter, she sold her “beloved Scotty and bought a slower, well-trained horse named Tiny. He was a jewel and knew his business better than anyone who rode him.”120 For trick riding, McGinnis usually worked with geldings, feeling they were easier to handle around other horses.121 Frank E. Dean’s manual Trick and Fancy Riding (1975) provides a more com­ prehensive description of the qualities of a good trick horse as well as of the training process. As in any equine discipline, a horse requires both the disposition and con­ formation fitting to the job it must perform. For trick events, it must be “sympathetic and understanding”—traits necessary to build trust, and probably have “a little age” on it, in contrast to a “young, flighty, or temperamental steed.”122 It should be fairly small, around fifteen hands, or whatever height puts the horse’s withers at the rider’s eye level, and have a well-built neck. It should be short coupled and short backed for practical purposes as well as comfort. Such conformation provides the rider with only a short distance to travel for tricks and vaults behind the saddle, as well as a smooth canter and enough impulsion for vaults and jumps. High withers are also useful to prevent saddle slippage. Breed, sex, and color matter little, unless color is important to the rider’s overall presentation or look. Quarter horses and quarter-horse crosses are often used.123 Training can take time, and the first task is to get the horse to accept being touched all over its body since “For in trick riding, your body will at some time or other be in all the places where that sack has been.”124 Next, the trainer moves to ride the horse, in the trick saddle since it has a double rigging and can be longer than an average saddle, to get it used to the equipment and sliding off the horse’s rear and jumping back, all at a standstill on to get it used to such movement. Then come exercises to train the horse: first walking, then cantering, to go straight in the middle of a track or arena, keeping away from the rail, with the reins hanging loose on its neck. And finally, it becomes a matter of putting it all together. Dean claims that with diligent practice and proceeding through the appropriate steps—never underestimating the usefulness of training at a standstill or at the walk—training a trick horse “does not require more than a week,” but sometimes “may take a month.”125 Overall, however, he warns that once the horse is running and the rider is performing a trick, the rider is, above everything, a passenger, unable to stop, straighten, or turn the horse and must rely on not only its training, but also its judgment. Dean attributes sympathy and understanding to the trick horse, a form of an­ thropomorphism that many animal rights theorists and animal behaviorists discredit

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 107 as “herectical and intellectually unsound.”126 Hearne, however, suggests that an­ thropomorphism is actually extraordinarily effective in facilitating nonhuman and human animal relations. For Hearne, training, the key form of communication be­ tween human and nonhuman animals, in fact occurs most productively when the animal is anthropomorphized.127Although Paul Patton has argued that Hearne fre­ quently elides the relations of power implicit in the training process, he acknowledges that training is one of the most important engagements a human can have with an animal. Training is a critical kind of encounter, a physical one, that posits animals not as interlocutors but as “moral beings capable of being endowed with certain rights and duties” and that, if done well, enables a form of interaction that enhances “the power and the feeling of power of both horse and rider.”128 The rider-trainer, like McGinnis, if adept, sets up situations in which the horse’s preference for balance and precision make it perform correctly, establishing a basis for trust predicated on responsibility—a kind of interspecies communication. That McGinnis won a lot, even on still-green horses, demonstrates both her athletic and communicative skills, as well as that she very well may have been what Patton deems a true rider: someone who earns the right to continuously question the horse’s performance, while in turn, the horse’s performance answers the rider’s questioning.129 McGinnis also anthro­ pomorphizes animals throughout her narrative, writing of them as companions and fellow laborers and acknowledging in them a consciousness and comprehension of their actions. Though not her trick horse, Earl’s horse Black Bud and McGinnis forge a strong bond. He becomes her trail horse and companion during her lonely years in Wyoming; he is a horse that indeed gets or fathoms her. He warns her of danger, saves her from being drowned in the river through calm, collected thinking, and helps her navigate the woods in the dark. She is heartbroken when Earl trades him for two coaching horses.130 Rodeo has been repeatedly charged for cruelty to animals. The Calgary Humane Society and cattlemen came together in an attempt to ban steer wrestling at the 1923 Calgary Stampede.131 The events surrounding the 1924 arrival of American producer John Van “Tex” Austin’s International Rodeo to London ignited further protests over roping when a steer broke its leg during the opening performance resulting in the event’s removal from the program and Austin’s arrest.132 When Austin returned to London with another rodeo in 1934, he was again charged with animal cruelty and underwent a trial.133 Today rodeo proponents maintain that the substantial economic interest in stock makes animal health and welfare a priority.134 Yet brutality remains at the core of the still highly masculinist institution because of rodeo’s connection to the frontier, a mythic landscape, formed and regenerated through violence, to borrow Richard Slotkin’s language, where vanquisher absorbs the energy of the van­ quished.135 Lawrence applies Slotkin’s concept not only to the breaking of the ranch horse and the riding of the rodeo bronc, but also to the pervasion of blood in rodeo: on fresh, oozing brands; on newly broken horses or injured broncs; and even on stock contractors, rodeo helpers, contestants, and pick-up men from interacting with ani­ mals.136 It is interesting to consider, therefore, that the turn in rodeo, under attack for animal abuse, was to slowly force women out of rough stock events. McGinnis and her fellow cowgirls rarely relied on brute strength or coercion to get their animals to perform. The most well-known cowgirls were in peak physical condition, but tiny in stature, and often weighed less than 100 pounds. Rodeo might have used its women participants more strategically to improve its public perception, by both increasing

108 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well women’s participation in rough-stock contests and publicizing women’s responses to cruelty allegations. For example, Gray continued to defend rodeo as pioneer sport, but tempered her defense by asserting her sympathy for those animals that may suffer at the hands of less sympathetic handlers, and that she, was by nature, sentimental about animals, unable to even hunt, feeling so moved by the “nicest little deer” who “looked so pretty swimming across the river.”137 Rodeo organizers moved instead to restrict rough-stock events to men, championing the violent events featuring the sex more emblematic of rugged, aggressive behavior.

The Rodeo Cowgirl in the Art of the West: Beyond the RPPC Prior to this turn, RPPCs featuring female cowgirls pictured astride unruly broncs or performing magisterial feats of horsemanship show women as participants in rodeo’s fantasy of the American West, key players in a theatrics of conquest revolving around the archetypal struggle between humans and nature, or the wild and tame. Cowgirls depictions, however, are rare within comparable Western fine art and illustration, which similarly mythologized the West as first, during the period of western ex­ pansion, a region ripe for settlement and economic exploitation with rapidly van­ ishing Indigenous populations and then, after the closing of the frontier, as a bleak, but electrifying landscape of weathered cowboys, wild broncs, army scouts and soldiers, downtrodden Native Americans, and thrilling skirmishes over territory.138 When women appear in these settings, they often assume the roles of wives and mothers promoting the welfare and comfort of family and tribe, and nymphs and maidens. This is true of even the art of Charles Marion Russell (1864–1926), whose life was shaped by many strong women including his wife and manager Nancy Cooper Russell and who produced over 300 Western-themed artworks—oils, wa­ tercolors, drawings, illustrations, and bronzes—with women as their primary sub­ ject.139 Russell habitually resorted to formulaic female tropes: of the domestic and natural in detailed, empathetic renderings of Native American women moving camp and scraping hides (Waterhole, 1906, Petrie Collection; and The Robe Flesher, 1925, Amon Carter Museum of American Art); of the exotic sensual in representations of native women in languid poses wearing loosely-draped garments exposing décolletage (Keeoma, 1898, Montana Historical Society Mackay Collection); and of victimhood and purity in images of white women set upon by Indians (Capture of Laura Edgar, 1894, Petrie Collection).140 Russell’s Capture of Laura Edgar, a fic­ tionalized composition featuring his first love Laura “Lollie” Edgar as one of the female models, relates to the long history of the captivity narrative that was adapted during the nineteenth century to sensationalized dime novel tales of the Old West.141 Dime novels popularized a series of Western female types, including the White Indian Queen, female detective, Girl Pard or Girl Scout, and cowgirl/Daughter of the West. As central characters, the pard/scout, detective, and cowgirl often drive the plot through their own heroic actions or by aiding male heroes in their quest to civilize the frontier, contrasting with the secondary, passive domestic roles inhabited by wives and mothers.142 Martha Burr writes that “to be a passive woman in the Western [dime novel] is to lose advantage, and those who win must take action.”143 Russell, a prolific illustrator, sometimes tackled spirited Western heroines, such as in his illus­ trations for Charles Wallace’s The Cattle Queen of Montana (1894), an adventure story about the exploits of intrepid adventurer and rancher Elizabeth Collins who,

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 109 with her husband Nat, managed a large livestock operation in turn-of-the-century Montana. Yet he largely avoided cowgirls, maintaining his iconic bucking scenes instead the broad purview of cowboys. In the handful of images in which Russell did portray cowgirls, they are linked to the rodeo. In 1925, he sent a sketch of a cowgirl atop a bucking horse—part of a cowgirl/cowboy pair of watercolors—to friend and Calgary Stampede promoter Guy Weadick as a cover design for the Stampede’s program (Bucking Horse and Cowgirl, ca. 1925; figure 3.13). Weadick’s own wife, Florence LaDue, was a champion rodeo trick rider and roper. Russell generally disliked rodeo since he perceived many of its events—namely steer wrestling—as “trumped-up ‘bunk.’”144 He nevertheless estab­ lished a longstanding association with the Stampede, attending regularly and ex­ hibiting there in 1912 and 1919. In a letter accompanying his sketch, he described Western girls: unrefined from riding snakey horses, dusty from the corral, and bowlegged—fitting a horse like “the kind Calgary wants.”145 Yet while his description fits those of dime novel heroines or even rodeo contestants such as Bertha Blancett on Eagle, his image portrays a dark-haired, stylishly dressed woman, her red scarf-belt flying out behind her, riding with such panache she can doff her hat as the horse springs off the ground (a composition related to the spiraling pattern of his bronc

Figure 3.13 Charles M. Russell, Bucking Horse and Cowgirl. ca. 1925. Ink with transparent and opaque watercolor over graphite underdrawing on paper. 13 3/8 × 11 1/4 in. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, Amon G. Carter Collection, 1961.187.

110 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well pictures146), more in keeping with those of smiling women and broncs found on photographs like that by Smith of Roach. That Russell chose to depict cowgirls and bucking horses in the context of rodeo suggests that even he, a Montana resident and former cowpuncher, imagined the cowgirl differently than the cowboy: she as “bunk”; he as a true frontiersman, most fittingly breaking broncs in cow camps. To represent a rodeo cowgirl maligned the origin myth of Russell’s wider Western oeuvre. It is likely for similar reasons that much nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury American (fine) art of the West also eschews cowgirl as well as rodeo themes.147 Artists in France and England, such as Mary Bonner (1887–1935), a Texan printmaker living in Paris between 1921 and 1927, and Charles Simpson (1885–1971), an English painter and illustrator specializing in Cornwall coast landscapes, waterfowl, and fox hunting subjects, did, however, engage with rodeo material in response to American rodeo performances staged abroad in 1924.148 The American West was of course an already established, fertile subject for foreign artists. Some traveled there, documenting its inhabitants and landscape; others drew in­ spiration from international exhibitions of North American artifacts and artworks, as well as from the many Wild West shows—Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, Pawnee Bill’s Historic Wild West, and the Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch Wild West—that toured the United Kingdom and Europe between 1887 and the onset of World War I.149 American stories and images of western expansionism and settler colonialism mapped easily onto British and European imperialist and colonialist ideologies and practices (certainly this process also worked in reverse).150 Thus perhaps fittingly, during the summer of 1924, “Tex” Austin’s International Rodeo played London’s newly built Wembley Stadium as part of the British Empire exhibition, with a roster of celebrity performers including McGinnis, Roach, Strickland, McCarroll, Dorothy Morrell, and Tad Lucas. A collaboration with London theatrical producer Charles B. Cochran, Austin’s production departed from earlier Wild West shows in that it eliminated Wild West spectacles like sharpshooting and mock stagecoach attacks to focus solely on cowboy and cowgirl contests: trick riding, bronc riding, relay races, and steer roping and wrestling—the latter restricted to men. Austin contracted his performers to compete twice daily against one another for prizes. Though dogged by animal welfare protests, Austin’s rodeo nonetheless proved popular enough to extend its original sixteen-day run an additional week.151 On Wembley’s heels followed Tommy Kirnan’s fall rodeos at London’s Coliseum and Paris’s Stade Vélodrome Buffalo.152 In November of 1924, at Paris’s Salon d’Automne, Bonner exhibited her first Western-themed etchings: scenes of cowboys on bucking broncos, ranchwomen, cattle, and Mesquite trees, each surrounded by running borders of cactus and prairie creatures.153 The next year, she created another grander, three-part etching, com­ posed again like a frieze, wherein bands of rattlesnakes, bats, sage grouse, and ar­ madillos frame a central steer wrestling image flanked by mounted cowboy and cowgirl groups (Les Cowboys, 1925; figure 3.14).154 Her figures wear wide, flatbrimmed hats with tall domed crowns, more like the traditional headgear of Mexican vaqueros or Latin American gauchos than the Stetson with pinched crown and curved brim, the choice of American rodeoers. According to the San Antonio Express, the idea to use motifs from her childhood spent on a Texas ranch came to Bonner on a cold bleak day in Paris, as she gazed into the fire:

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 111

Figure 3.14 Mary Bonner, Les Cowboys. 1925. Etching with hand coloring. Collection of the McNay Art Museum, Gift of Katy Calogeras. This etching is an artist’s proof of the third frame of Les Cowboys that Bonner exhibited in 1925 at the Salon d’Automne, Paris.

She saw some of the things characteristic of her home state and transplanted them, as the Greeks did, in using landscape for borders instead of background. She combined the rattlesnake, centipede, and the cactus to make a border around two cowboys on … a pair of bucking broncos. And that is what she called ‘Texas.’155 Yet such an anecdote about youthful memories fanned by the flames of a toasty fire can only be part of Bonner’s inspiration story. Surely, the rodeo’s Paris arrival also kindled the artist’s interest in related topics.156 She exhibited her first Western prints less than two months later, capitalizing on a timely subject that had long enthralled French audiences and laying claim to it through her background as an actual daughter of the West. Though her earliest Western etchings may be more generalized ranch scenes colored by Texas flora and fauna, her subsequent Les Cowboys can be traced directly to the events and circulating imagery of Austin’s and Kirnan’s rodeos.157 One of Les Cowboys’s mounted cowboys carries a lasso and can be identified as a roper. Its central panel, which depicts steer wrestling, distinctly draws from the cover image of Austin’s Wembley rodeo program, reducing the pictorial details of a man swooping down upon a steer’s head to grab its horns into a dynamic arrangement of bold, black outlines, punctuated with patches of color. Her inclusion of cowgirls is also a likely consequence of their widespread popularity and notoriety in an inter­ national press that fervently followed their activities both in and out of the arena.

112 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well Les Cowboys’s bronc busting women, distinguished by their long flowing hair and divided skirts, reflect the wealth of visual materials related to the London and Paris rodeos, including newspaper photos and postcards of costumed riders on horseback as well as promotional posters for the Paris Vélodrome show, one of which featured Roach atop a rearing bronc. Bonner’s images, like Russell’s, thus suture the cowgirl to the rodeo. It is unknown whether Bonner visited Kirnan’s Paris rodeo or just drew inspiration from its publicity material. Simpson, however, spent the entirety of Austin’s London show on Wembley’s stadium grounds sketching furiously from dawn until dusk.158 He published one hundred of his resultant gouaches and crayon drawings the fol­ lowing year as the portfolio book El Rodeo (1925). Unique for its time as an ex­ haustive catalog of a single rodeo, El Rodeo comprises depictions of dynamic arena performances; intimate sketches of stabling activities such as cattle making their way through chutes, contestants readying for competition, and horses resting (The Stable Tent, Showing Sea Chests and Saddlery, 1925; figure 3.15); and a series of portraits of the rodeo’s human and animal participants including Austin, cowgirls and cow­ boys, clown Red Sublette, Black groom Lightning, and bucking horses Deerfoot, War Bonnet, and Tragedy.

Figure 3.15 Charles Simpson, The Stable Tent, Showing Sea Chests and Saddlery. 1925. Crayon on board. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 1980.05.07. Illustrated in El Rodeo (1925), 88.

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 113 Evocative text and explanatory captions enhance Simpson’s images, adding color and context to mainly black and white reproductions.159 He describes contestant clothing in detail: cowboys’ “broad check shirts in black and green or grey relieved by scarlet neckties” and chaps made of sheepskin or adorned with metal studs and conchos glinting in the light; Roach’s red silk stockings, white breeches, and white hat with a black lash; Florence Fenton’s green outfit and hat pulled low over her eyes; Bea Kirnan’s “crimson fancy roping dress, with silk sash, and white tie”; and Maud Elder’s buff breeches and cream shirt.160 He also provides a wealth of information about horses. About the stabling scenes, Simpson writes: Inside the long tent the light is warm and dull, diffused throughout the canvas; dust floats in the beams of sun breaking through over the backs of horses. … Across the tent at long intervals are gangways, blocked by rows of sea-chests, leaving a passage just large enough to allow strings of horses returning from the water trough to enter and pass up to their places in the picket lines. … The heads of the horses recede into the dim recesses of the tent until those farthest off are only vaguely defined, here and there a white animal stands out, and a conspicuous marking such as a blaze or star on the forehead shines out of the gloom, partly concealed by a dark fringe of forelock.161 Deerfoot, a rather innocuous-looking horse with a white blaze and ears pricked forward, he explains, “kicked two men to death during contests in the states.” Tragedy, who hangs his head dejectedly, bears facial scars “caused by the rider’s spurs during bucking.”162 Simpson’s accounts of one horse’s injuries and another seemingly docile but with violent tendencies encapsulate controversies over rodeo animal welfare that occurred throughout the production’s run. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) protested events’ intrinsic brutality. Certainly, Tragedy’s scars lend credence to such complaints. Animal welfare activists, however, also criticized ro­ deo’s fiction of wild and vicious stock, which they claimed was a dishonest justifi­ cation for the animals’ cruel mistreatment, since by eyewitness accounts, rodeo horses and cattle were tame, placid creatures and thus must be forcibly coerced to buck and perform against their will.163 Earlier disputes about the true wildness of Wild West show horses had emerged during Buffalo Bill’s 1889 Paris appearances, with both a Paris jockey club and artist Rosa Bonheur offering up horses for William F. Cody’s cowboys to publicly tame.164 R.B. [Robert Bontine] Cunninghame Graham, a Scottish adventurer and politician who also spent several years on an Argentine cattle ranch, uses his introduction to El Rodeo to respond to such debates, taking great pains to laud the life of a bucking horse and claim its innate wildness. A bucker, he says, is neither whipped nor spurred to run like an English racehorse because rodeo rules forbid whips “and only coun­ tenance blunt spurs.”165 It is collected from the range during rodeo season, exercised scantly, and never bitted, then again turned out to reassume its feral state.166 Though Cunninghame Graham is mistaken about rodeo animals’ lives—for such a trip abroad, Austin would have taken tractable, tested stock accustomed to rodeo rou­ tines and travel167—he rightly highlights the classist hypocrisy of English criticism that often ignored cruelty in its own backyard. He also maintains that at least rodeo’s animal-centered contests originated in the essential work of North and Latin

114 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well American beef production, as opposed to English equestrian pursuits (polo, racing, and hunting) borne from the pomp and circumstance of the leisured elite.168 Thus perhaps ironically, within Cunninghame Graham’s introduction seems also to be a desire to recognize Simpson’s rodeo portfolio as a legitimate subset of equine sporting art—recall that before El Rodeo, Simpson had made a name for himself as a painter and illustrator of the fox hunt—by asserting its merit to sportsmen-collectors who might dismiss the Wembley rodeo as American theatrics or be turned off by its negative press coverage. Challenging cruelty charges is one part of his tactic. Another is exhaustively explaining rodeo’s terminology and its feats of horsemanship derived from the Spanish language and Latin American range customs. And still another is praising Simpson’s artistry. For crayon portraits and stabling views, Simpson drew rapidly, outlining bodies, hats, and tack, then shading in details with short hatched lines of various densities. His arena gouache Mounting a Bronk from the Chute (1925; figure 3.16), a picture of McCarroll atop the chute fence about to board a bronc, is more impressionistic, with opaque color applied in daubs, whorls, and loose strokes to suggest form and movement in the crowd-filled stadium, and in McCarroll’s spur, her trouser designs, and the rising head and flared nostril of a keen, anxious horse. But whereas Simpson described his Wembley process as more “like camera work” than normal sketching because of its haste, Cunninghame Graham counters that “nothing is further from Mr. Simpson’s art than is photography.”169 With this statement, Cunninghame Graham shrewdly distinguishes El Rodeo from

Figure 3.16 Charles Simpson, Mounting a Bronk from the Chute. 1925. Gouache on board. National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 1980.05.01. Illustrated in El Rodeo (1925), 114.

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 115 possibly its closest rival, the commercial RPPC, the more common recorder of rodeo, to cast Simpson’s portfolio as a superior, artistic compendium of a misunderstood but worthy subject, on par with paintings, editioned prints, and illustrated works by noted sporting artists and animaliers. Simpson’s El Rodeo nonetheless retains certain parallels with RPPCs, especially in its depictions of female rodeo performers who emerge as its most compelling stars. Wembley’s plucky cowgirls mesmerized Simpson. He documented them assiduously in bust-length crayon portraits as well as in scenes of arena activity similar in composi­ tion, if not technique, to those found on RPPCs: cowgirls assembling for trick riding; Roach performing a hippodrome stand on Buddie; Morrell glued to the back of bronc Bigenough; McCarroll in the chute; and Barnes besting McGinnis at the relay finish line. Yet whether cowgirls belonged unequivocally to rodeo’s show side rather than to the legacy of the working cattle range, it apparently didn’t matter to Simpson.170 After watching one woman break her collarbone and another knocked unconscious by a blow from her horse’s head, Simpson’s alarm turned quickly to a profound respect for cowgirls’ professionalism and equestrian prowess. He describes Morrell’s poise in the saddle—not an inch did she shift as Bigenough’s body expanded and contracted like a spring—and McGinnis’s exploits in rodeos across the world, recounted matter-of-factly to him in her dressing room.171 Together Simpson’s images and text express a per­ ception of cowgirls as true professional horsewomen, with a deep regard for animals and an array of skills in different equestrian disciplines. Though distinctly different forms—one, a portfolio book of gouaches produced by a recognized animal artist and targeted to well-to-do collectors of sporting imagery, and the other, a cheap, commercial souvenir widely available to the masses—both El Rodeo and the RPPC provided material objects through which to admire, possess, and understand the cowgirl and her mount. With rodeo’s increasing restrictions on cowgirl competitions and expanding pageantry came women’s growing presence as acrobats or studio pin-ups, stitching them to long-held visions of the West where men govern the sphere of livestock while women play supporting, decorative roles. Yet prior to this turn, images of women competing on horses in the staged setting of the rodeo arena, against and alongside men, destabilized such enduring myths through a process of doubling: where women figure as actors, performing an imagined West of history, and as participants in the lived reality of the modern West, a landscape shaped by nostalgia, technology, the forced removal of Indigenous peoples, fencing, and depopulation. Many rodeo women often grew up with animals, and even while rodeoing, continued to make a living in the off seasons by ranching, homesteading, or breeding and showing horses and livestock. Images of them, even within rodeo’s whitewashed history, offer alternatives to period (fine) art of the West by representing important encounters of difference, kinship, and communication between women and the horses they handle well, those to and by whom their identities are mutually bound and informed.

Notes 1 Frank E. Dean, Trick and Fancy Riding (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1997), 103. 2 RPPCs were widely produced from ca. 1905-1930. The designation “Real Photo” dis­ tinguished these postcards from other abundantly available photo-mechanically

116 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well

3

4

5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15 16

17 18 19

reproduced materials produced during the same period. Rosamond B. Vaule, As We Were: American Photographic Postcards, 1905–1930 (Boston: David R. Godine, 2004), 19–22. To distinguish one’s work and protect its reproduction, photographers frequently in­ cluded both their names and copyright marks on postcards. Yet determining card’s maker can sometimes be tricky because photographers often acquired their associates’ negatives to reprint. They sometimes clarified roles by adding their names to the original name or copyright mark; as often they substituted their own names, deceptively marketing the cards as their own. On new photographic technology, see Vaule, As We Were, 48, 53–54. On rodeo pho­ tographers’ shooting, printing, and sales techniques, see Henry Pacheco, “The ‘Daddy’ of Rodeo Photographs,” Cheyenne Sunday Magazine, July 20, 1969, clipping, Ralph Russell Doubleday File, Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. August 31, 1908, unknown source, clipping, J.S. Palen Collection, Box 7, Folder 14, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY. Railroads offered tours to rodeo towns across the West. Special trains also ran from Denver to Cheyenne during Frontier Days. “Cowgirls to be Colorful Feature of Cheyenne Wild West Festival,” July 18, 1924, unknown source, clipping, J.S. Palen Collection, Box 9, Folder 10. Tracey Owens Patton and Sally M. Schedlock, Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo: Breaking Away from the Ties of Sexism and Racism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012). Barrel racing is included at PRCA rodeos, but it is sanctioned by the Women’s Professional Rodeo Association. McGinnis, Rodeo Road: My Life as a Pioneer Cowgirl (New York: Hastings House Publishers, 1974); and Mary Lou Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 110. Mulhall, quoted in Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 9. McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 180–82; and Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 85. Arnold Arluke and Robert Bogdan, “Taming the Wild: Rodeo as a Human-Animal Metaphor,” in Sport, Animals, and Society, eds. James Gillett and Michelle Gilbert (New York: Routledge, 2014), 16; Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence, Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and Tame (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982) 7, 218; and Donald G. Wetherell, “Making Tradition: The Calgary Stampede, 1912–1939,” in Icon, Brand, Myth: The Calgary Stampede, ed. Max Foran (Edmonton: AU Press, 2008), 25, 27. Arluke and Bogdan, “Taming the Wild,” 16, 19; and Weatherell, “Making Tradition,” 27. Lawrence, Rodeo, 11. Arluke and Bogdan, “Taming the Wild,” 27. Patton and Schedlock, Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo; Jeannette Vaught, “All Hat, No Cattle,” review of Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo, HumAnimalia 4, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 150; Vaught, “Science, Animals, and Profit-Making in the American Rodeo Arena” (PhD diss., University of Texas-Austin, 2015), 80; and Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo. Jason E. Pierce, Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016). Marilyn Burgess, “From Noble to Notorious: The Western Adventure Heroine,” in Indian Princesses and Cowgirls: Stereotypes from the Frontier, eds. Gail Guthrie Valaskakis and Marilyn Burgess (Montréal: OBORO, 1992), 77. Sioux was a general label applied to Princess Red Bird who was reputedly from Flambeau, North Dakota, but also lived at some point in Arlee, Montana. “Summary of Today’s Round-Up Results,” East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily edition, September 23, 1915; “Championships Won at Round-Up,” East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily evening edition, September 27, 1915; and Ellen Baumler, “The Ladies Busted Broncs,” Montana, Women’s History Matters, July 24, 2014, http://montanawomenshistory.org/the-ladiesbusted-broncs/. The use of Sioux as generalized term for Native American Wild West and

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 117

20 21

22

23

24 25

rodeo performers can be traced to William F. Cody, who employed mainly Lakotas and thus labeled all indigenous members of his show as “Sioux.” Douglas A. Schmittou and Michael H. Logan, “Fluidity of Meaning: Flag Imagery in Plains Indian Art,” American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 4 (Autumn 2002): 582. The hippodrome stand is a trick where a rider stands atop the horse with feet secured in a hippodrome strap, which is attached to saddle’s front rigging Dee rings (on either side of the horse’s withers). The absence of supporting documentation, however, makes this identification hard to verify. On Mrs. Sherry as African American, see Patton and Schedlock, Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo, 155; and Patton and Schedlock, “Let’s Go, Let’s Show, Let’s Rodeo: African Americans and the History of Rodeo,” Journal of African American History 96, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 508. Information accompanying Doubleday’s and Bowman’s postcards in the Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK, also identify her as African American. However, in her autobiography, McGinnis describes meeting Barney Sherry, a “squaw man” (slang for a white man with a Native American wife) from Pendleton, Oregon with a string of relay horses at a 1913 Salt Lake City rodeo. In 1917 and 1922, the Pendleton East Oregonian reporteda Josephine Sherry’s placings in Round-Up cowgirl standing and relay races riding her own horses. Josephine was also reputedly an adept trick rider and competed in other Oregonian rodeos. Though none of these accounts mention Josephine’s race, unusual if she was a woman of color, it is coincidental that Barney and Josephine, both with connections to Oregon rodeo culture, share the same surnames. McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 23; “Patriotic Note in Round-Up Stirs Throng to Wildest Enthusiasm,” East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily evening edition, September 21, 1917; “World Championships at Stake; Here Is a List of Winners Since First Show Was Staged,” East Oregonian Round-Up Souvenir Edition (Pendleton, OR), September 21, 1922; and Joe Peterson, “Rogue River Round-Up,” Oregon Encyclopedia, accessed December 16, 2020, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/ articles/rogue_river_roundup/#.X9rKt157mis. The magazine Black Reins regularly features articles on mainstream Black rodeo parti­ cipants. On alternative rodeos, see Peter Iverson and Lina MacCannell, Riders of the West: Portraits from Indian Rodeo (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 1999); Demetrius W. Pearson, “Shadow Riders of the Subterranean Circuit: A Descriptive Account of Black Rodeo in the Texas Gulf Coast Region,” in Black Cowboys in the American West: On the Range, On the Stage, Behind the Badge, eds. Bruce A Glasrud and Michael N. Searles (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 101–113; Patton and Schedlock, “Let’s Go, Let’s Show,” 513–517; and Rebecca Elena Scofield, “Riding Bareback: Rodeo Communities and the Construction of American Gender, Sexuality, and Race in the Twentieth Century” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2015). I discovered many RPPCs for sale on Ebay and other internet auction sites, with writing and postmarks. However, because the market prizes the pristine and unused, most for sale are blank. Bereft of personal information and lacking provenance makes it difficult to explain without a doubt how and by whom individual rodeo postcards were used. That Doubleday reputedly made two hundred prints per negative on site at the rodeo and needed two sales assistants to market his wares suggests that only a fraction of cards have survived, like much ephemera. Many archival collections (the State of Wyoming’s Doubleday Collection or the University of Oregon’s Bowman Collection) also house not the cards, but the original photographic negatives from which cards were printed. While these can be useful for determining subject matter and printing choices, they don’t tell us much about a resultant postcard’s life. Always attentive to revenue, Doubleday offered card collections at different price points, from miniature packs of cards to colorful “souvenir folders” that consisted of multi-sheet accordion foldouts with a chromolithographed image on both sides of each sheet. Amy Mecklenburg-Faenger, “Trifles, Abominations, and Literary Gossip: Gendered Rhetoric and Nineteenth-Century Scrapbooks,” Genders 55 (2012), https://www. colorado.edu/gendersarchive1998-2013/2012/02/01/trifles-abominations-and-literarygossip-gendered-rhetoric-and-nineteenth-century.

118 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 26 Joyce Gibson Roach, The Cowgirls (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1990); and Teresa Jordan, Cowgirls: Women of the American West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992). 27 Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo; and Renée M. Laegreid, Rodeo Royalty in the American West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006). 28 Jordan, Cowgirls, xxx. 29 Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 5. 30 Philip Durham and Everett L. Jones, The Negro Cowboys (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 30–31; and David Goldstein-Shirley, “Black Cowboys in the American West: An Historical Review,” Ethnic Studies Review 20 (1997): 79; and Deborah M. Liles, “Before Emancipation: Black Cowboys and the Livestock Industry,” in Black Cowboys in the American West, 20–21. 31 Jennifer R. Henneman, “Her Representation Precedes Her: Transatlantic Celebrity, Portraiture, and Visual Culture, 1865–1890” (PhD diss., University of Washington, 2016), 156, 158. According to Lecompte, though many claim the word cowgirl was first applied to Lucille Mulhall around 1900, it was already in use by 1893, the year the Police Gazette pronounced Gertrude Petran “a genuine and fascinating cowgirl” (Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 37). Henneman notes even earlier uses in Edward Barker’s Through Auvernegne on Foot (1884) and an 1884 Boston Journal article (157n432). 32 Burgess, “From Noble to Notorious,” 55–75. The association of cowgirl heroines and outlaws, both real and fictional, with a racially-mixed heritage, however, is highly pro­ blematic because it entailed both gross cultural appropriation, i.e., playing Indian, and stories of masculine, sexually-deviant cowgirls and frontier women gone native, grafting ideologies of racial hierarchies and stereotypes of primitive Otherness onto women living and acting unconventionally. 33 The transition to separate contests for cowgirls began around 1906 when Cheyenne Frontier Days began offering cowgirl bronc riding and relay races on the regular program. Six years later the Calgary Stampede expanded the women’s program with fancy and trick riding and roping. In steer roping, women continued to compete against men. Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 41, 49–51. 34 Ibid., 52–53. 35 “Beauty Will Be There,” 1901, unknown source, clipping, J.S. Palen Collection, Box 17, Folder 2. 36 T. Jones Cahill, “Daddy of ‘Wild West Shows,’” Union Pacific Magazine, date unknown, quote reprinted in “Cowgirl Also Takes Part,” Wyoming State Tribune and Cheyenne Leader, Sunday, June 1, 1924, clipping, Hanesworth Collection, Box 11, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY. 37 Vaught, “All Hat, No Cattle,” 151. 38 Roach, The Cowgirls, xxi. 39 Shelley Armitage, “Western Heroines: Real and Fictional Cowgirls,” Heritage of the Great Plains 12, no. 2 (Spring 1979): 13. 40 Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 40, 95. 41 Ibid. 47. 42 William Klette, “The Saga of Vera Mac,” Western Horseman 34, no. 1 (January 1969): 74; and Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 55–56. 43 McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 9–22. 44 Ibid., 32–33. 45 Ibid., 192. 46 Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 30. 47 Virgil Rupp, Let ‘er Buck! A History of the Pendleton Round-Up (Pendleton, OR: Pendleton Round-Up Association, 1985), 8, 10. 48 In addition to rodeo competitors, Bowman photographed members of Eastern Oregon’s American Indian tribes who lived on the Umatilla Indian Reservation as well as daily life and events in the region. On Bowman, see Joseph P. Gaston, The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811–1912, vol. 2 (Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1912), 361. On the end of women’s events, see Rupp, Let ‘Er Buck, 44; and Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 95.

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 119 49 Klette, “Saga of Vera Mac,” 75. 50 Rupp, Let ‘Er Buck, 18. 51 The Round-Up paid high sums—usually more than a hundred dollars—for quality bucking stock. Rupp, Let ‘Er Buck, 14-15. 52 Though the Dickinson Research Center dates Bowman’s photograph to ca. 1920, I believe it records a 1915 event. Another photograph by Thomas “Lee” Moorhouse, dated 1915, shows Blancett riding Eagle from another perspective during what is evidently the same Pendleton contest. Blancett had been the first to compete in all four cowgirl events—the relay, Roman race, trick riding, and bronc riding—at the 1912 Calgary Stampede, the first rodeo to offer a full program of cowgirl events; she also earned the Pendleton’s ladies’ championship title in 1914, and came in second for the all-around title. In 1915, the Round-Up committee imposed a new rule that precluded women from winning the overall championship and limiting them at best to second place. Weatherell, “Making Tradition,” 27–28; Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 49–53; and Rupp, Let ‘Er Buck, 18. 53 Susan K. Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sport (New York: The Free Press, 1994), 33–51. 54 Linda Rose Sanderson, “‘A Ringside Seat to Paradise’: Rodeo Cowgirls, The New Woman, and The Construction of a Usable Past” (PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 2006), 102–103. 55 Doubleday was also a master at self-mythologization and self-promotion. At some point, he changed his last name from Cochran to Doubleday and left a wife and child to travel the rodeo circuit. Charles E. Rand, “From Canton to Council Bluffs: The Rodeo Road Less Traveled by R. R. Doubleday,” unpublished manuscript, 2004, Ralph Russell Doubleday File, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, n.p. Rand intended this research as the first chapter of a book tentatively titled Doubleday’s Cowgirls: Women in the Rodeo. On Doubleday’s career, see Pacheco, “‘Daddy’ of Rodeo Photos,”; I.L. Pflaser, “The Rodeo Postcard King,” Western Horseman 38, no. 1 (January 1973): 68–70, 125–26; and Willard Porter, “Shooting the Rodeo: The Story of R.R. ‘Dub’ Doubleday,” True West 36, no. 4 (April 1989): 40–43. 56 Moorhouse, a local amateur photographer, a former agent for the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and Pendleton businessman and politician, took nearly seven hundred images of the Round-Up, the rodeo co-founded by Moorhouse’s son. Rodeo scenes are only a fraction of the roughly nine thousand glass plate negatives he made of ranch life, local town activities, and reservation scenes. Steven L. Grafe, Peoples of the Plateau: the Indian Photographs of Lee Moorhouse, 1898–1915 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005), 27–28. 57 Peggy Warren came in second; Princess Redbird was third. “New World Champions Made Today,” East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily edition, September 25, 1915; and “Championships Won at Round-Up.” 58 “Summary of Today’s Round-Up Results.” 59 “Last Day of Results at a Glance,” East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily edition, September 25, 1915. 60 Schmittou and Logan, “Fluidity of Meaning,” 564, 567–8. 61 “12,000 People Cheer Contests,” East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily edition, September 25, 1915. 62 On Smith, see Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 82. Stryker printed Riding High in postcard formats throughout his life. He did offer individual photographs for sale, but more often sold series such as “Stryker’s Collection of Modern Rodeo Cowboys and Cowgirls in Fast Action Photographs,” a souvenir booklet of 24 images. Jim Linderman, “Striking Photographs by John Stryker,” Dull Tool Dim Bulb, accessed October 23, 2020, http://dulltooldimbulb.blogspot.com/2009/12/striking-photographs-by-john-stryker. html#.Udx5haxXdii. 63 Ron Tyler, Rodeo of John Addison Stryker (Austin, Texas: The Encino Press, 1977), xii. 64 Erwin E. Smith, letter to Stryker, September 20, 1920, quoted in Tyler, Rodeo, xii. 65 Will Rogers, “The Worst Story I Have Heard Today,” quoted in Rand, “From Canton to Council Bluffs,” n.p.; and Porter, “Shooting the Rodeo,” 41.

120 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 66 Doubleday used a ca. 1880 5 × 7 inch plate model with a “500-speed roller-blind shutter.” Rand, “From Canton to Council Bluffs,” n.p. For newer, faster speed cameras suitable for sports, see Graflex and Graflex and Graphic Cameras (Rochester, NY: Folmer & Schwing Co., July 1, 1906), 3, http://www.piercevaubel.com/cam/catalogs/ 1906folmer&schwinglp801.htm. 67 Eadweard Muybridge, Muybridge’s Complete Human and Animal Locomotion, All 781 Plates from the 1887 Animal Locomotion (New York: Dover, 1979), 3: 1182–83. Muybridge did, however, photograph a young girl (clothed) riding a donkey in the sidesaddle style at the Philadelphia Zoological Gardens (Plate 666: “Zoo” walking, saddled. A girl riding, in Muybridge’s Complete Human and Animal Locomotion, 3: 1350–51). 68 Janine A. Mileaf, “Poses for the Camera: Eadweard Muybridge’s Studies of the Human Figure,” American Art 16, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 35, 37. For a description of actions see Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. Prospectus and Catalogue of Plates (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Co., 1887), reproduced in Muybridge’s Complete Human and Animal Locomotion. 69 Mileaf, “Poses for the Camera,” 35. Animal Locomotion’s Plates 427 and 428, of women disrobing, recall female subjects’ poses in Jean-Léon Gérôme’s paintings. Mileaf theorizes that Thomas Eakins, the artist instrumental in bringing Muybridge to Philadelphia and who was engaged in his own photographic motion studies, likely proposed the compo­ sitions since he studied with Gérôme in Paris during the 1860s (45–49). 70 Elizabeth Karr, The American Horsewoman (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1884), 160–167, 123, 118. 71 Susan K. Cahn, “From the ‘Muscle Moll’ to the ‘Butch’ Ballplayer: Mannishness, Lesbianism, and Homophobia in the U.S. Women’s Sport,” Feminist Studies 19, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 345–346. 72 Kim Marra, “Riding, Scarring, Knowing: A Queerly Embodied Performance Historiography,” Theatre Journal 64, no. 4 (December 2012): 491–92. 73 Karr, The American Horsewoman, 2–3. 74 Ellie Woznica, introduction to Horsewomanship in 19th-Century America, ed. Ellie Woznica (Alfred, NY: Whitlock Publishing, 2017), i. 75 Cahn, Coming on Strong, 30. 76 “The Montana Girl,” Los Angeles Times, August 30, 1897. 77 Los Angeles Times, The Lancer, March 19, 1905. 78 Lawrence, Rodeo, 122, 59, 62. 79 Ibid., 126. 80 “Prairie Rose Pets Coyote,” July 18, 1924, unknown source, clipping, J.S. Palen Collection, Box 9, Folder 10. 81 Lawrence, Rodeo, 126. 82 Kate Palmer Albers, Uncertain Histories: Accumulation, Inaccessibility, and Doubt in Contemporary Photography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015), 23. 83 Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 95. 84 Juni Fisher, “The Last Ride of Bonnie McCarroll,” True West, June 27, 2011, https:// truewestmagazine.com/the-last-ride-of-bonnie-mccarroll/. 85 Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 95–97; and Rupp, Let ‘Er Buck, 44. 86 For 1933 family letters about Marie Gibson’s death, see Mrs. Grant E. Ashby Rodeo Collection, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. 87 Rodeos began contracting top cowgirls to “compete” for modest, flat fees; in the East, women appeared in bronc and trick riding exhibitions; in the West, in relay races. Judges awarded additional compensation in the form of prize money. Fraud, favoritism, and equity disputes thwarted this new system. Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 104–105. 88 Michael Allen, “The Rise and Decline of the Early Rodeo Cowgirl: The Career of Mabel Strickland, 1916–1941,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 83, no. 4 (1992): 126. 89 Laegreid, Riding Pretty, 177–180; and Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 154–55. 90 Laegreid, Riding Pretty, 18–19, 25.

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 121 91 Ibid., 46–47, 73; and Joan Burbick, Rodeo Queens: On the Circuit with America’s Cowgirls (New York: PublicAffairs, 2002), 88. 92 “Cowgirls to be Colorful Feature of Cheyenne Wild West Festival,” July 18, 1924, un­ known source, clipping, J.S. Palen Collection, Box 9, Folder 10; and Allen, “The Rise and Decline of the Early Rodeo Cowgirl,” 124. 93 Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 105, 114–115. 94 McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 43. 95 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (October 1975): 6–18. 96 “Rodeo Life Real Says Bonnie Gray,” July 23, 1927, unknown source, clipping, J.S. Palen Collection, Box 9, Folder 14. 97 “Bonnie Gray, Lover of Horses,” July 14, 1927, unknown source, clipping, J.S. Palen Collection, Box 9, Folder 14. 98 McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 22. 99 Ibid., 111. 100 Kari Weil, “Purebreds and Amazons: Saying Things with Horses in Late NineteenthCentury France,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 11, no. 1 (1999): 7–8. 101 Amazon, referencing the fierce female equestrian warriors of Greek myth, became a term used from the early modern period onwards to describe independent, sporting eques­ triennes, including both accomplished, upper-class women turned out in a fashionable riding habits who followed the hunts or lower-class women, especially courtesans, dressed in finery who rode for pleasure and pretense in urban parks. Amazon could also be used to describe écuyères who appeared on horseback in circuses and hippodromes, performing high-school, dressage maneuvers or acrobatics on horseback. On the history of the amazon and her costume, see Janet Arnold, “Dashing Amazons: The Development of Women’s Riding Dress, c. 1500–1900,” in Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning, and Identity, eds. Amy de la Haye and Elizabeth Wilson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 10–29. 102 “Beauty Will Be There”; and “Cowboys Do Tricks in Rodeo at Garden,” New York Times, November 5, 1922, quoted in Lecompte, Cowgirls of the Rodeo, 82. 103 McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 173–175. On Bradna’s Act Beautiful, see Wilton Eckley, The American Circus (Boston: Twain Publishers, 1984), 92–94; and A. Morton Smith, “Circus Stars of Yesteryears, VIII. Fred and Ella Bradna,” Hobbies, March 1951, 26–27. 104 Susanna Hedenberg and Gertrude Pfister, “Écuyères and ‘Doing Gender’: Presenting Femininity in a Male Domain—Female Circus Riders, 1800–1920,” Scandinavian Sport Studies Forum 3 (2012): 39–41. 105 Weil, “Purebreds and Amazons,” 9. 106 Théophile Gautier, review of Mazeppa, Le Moniteur Universel, January 7, 1867, quoted in Weil, “Purebreds and Amazons,” 12. 107 Weil, “Purebreds and Amazons,” 11. 108 Vicki Hearne, Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name (1986, New York: Harper Perennial, 1994), 109. 109 Lawrence, Rodeo, 145–146. 110 Ibid., 145. 111 Dean, Trick and Fancy Riding, 10, 14. 112 McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 22. 113 Dean, Trick and Fancy Riding, 64–65. 114 “Bonnie Gray, Lover of Horses.” 115 Allen, “The Rise and Decline of the Rodeo Cowgirl,” 124. 116 On bucking horse breeding programs, see Wayne S. Wooden and Gavin Ehringer, Rodeo in America: Wranglers, Roughstock, and Paydirt (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 118–120. 117 McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 123. 118 Ibid., 165. 119 Ibid., 208. 120 Ibid., 214.

122 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132

133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147

148

149

Klette, “Saga of Vera Mac,” 141. Dean, Trick and Fancy Riding, 7. Ibid., 7–9. Ibid., 10. Ibid., 11–14. Hearne, Adam’s Task, 10. Ibid., 43. Paul Patton, “Language, Power, and the Training of Horses,” in Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, ed. Cary Wolfe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 95, 97. Patton, “Language, Power,” 89, 86. McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 99. Wooden and Ehringer, Rodeo in America, 126. Kristine Fredriksson, “Sixty Years of American Rodeo in England, 1887–1947,” in The Westerners Brand Book, No. 16, ed. Raymond F. Wood (Glendale, California: Westerners, Los Angeles Corral, 1982), 103–108; and Willard H. Porter, “When They Took the West to London,” True West 32, no. 9 (September 1985): 12–13. Austin was charged with violating he Protection of Animals Act that had been passed by Parliament only in May of that year, clearly by design, in preparation for the rodeo’s arrival in the city. Fredriksson, “Sixty Years,” 107–109. Wooden and Ehringer, Rodeo in America, 127. Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the Western Frontier, 1600–1800 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973). Lawrence, Rodeo, 159–160; “Bonnie Gray is Hurt by Horse,” Wyoming State Tribune and Cheyenne Leader, Wednesday, July 14, 1928, clipping, Hanesworth Collection, Box 11, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY. See especially the groundbreaking catalog: William H. Truettner and Nancy K. Anderson, eds., The West as America: Reinterpreting Images for the Frontier, 1820–1920, exh. cat. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991). Ginger K. Renner, “Charlie and the Ladies in His Life,” Montana The Magazine of Western History 34, no. 3 (Summer 1984), 34–61. On Russell’s many representations of women, see Joan Carpenter Troccoli, ed., Charles M. Russell: The Women in His Life and Art, exh. cat. (Great Falls, MT: C.M. Russell Museum, 2018). Joan Carpenter Troccoli, “Charles M. Russell’s Women: Reality, Convention, and Imagination,” in Charles M. Russell: The Women in His Life and Art, 11–12. Martha Burr, “The American Cowgirl: History and Iconography, 1860–Present” (PhD diss., New York University, 1998), 92; and Henneman, “Her Reputation Precedes Her,” 161. Burr, “American Cowgirl,” 96. Peter H. Hassrick, Charles M. Russell (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989), 125, 129. Charles Russell, letter to Guy Weadick, April 7, 1925 (Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 1961.304); and Brian W. Dippie, ed. Paper Talk: Charlie Russell’s American West (Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1979), 204–05. Troccoli, “Charles M. Russell’s Women,” 21. In 1954, rodeo historian Clifford P. Westermeier questioned why such a popular sport had not become “a widespread theme for artistic expression,” quoted in Michael Allen, Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998), 113. Allen, Rodeo Cowboys, 114; Mary Carolyn Hollers George, Mary Bonner: Impressions of a Printmaker (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1982); and John Branfield, Charles Simpson: Painter of Animals & Birds, Coastline & Moorland (Bristol: Sansom & Co., 2007). Fredriksson, “Sixty Years,” 97, 100.

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 123 150 For an analysis of French encounters with and responses to the American West, see Emily C. Burns, Transnational Frontiers: The American West in France (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018). 151 Fredriksson, “Sixty Years,” 101–103; and McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 186. 152 Both Kirnan and his wife Bea performed at Austin’s Wembley rodeo. They recruited many of their fellow performers to stay on for Kirnan’s London and Paris productions. McGinnis, Rodeo Road, 186–88; and Fredriksson, “Sixty Years,” 102. 153 The Salon d’Automne ran November 1 to December 14, 1924. 154 George, Mary Bonner, 32–33. 155 San Antonio Express, January 25, 1925, quoted in George, Mary Bonner, 32. 156 Kirnan’s rodeo played Paris from September 6–14, 1924. 157 Fredriksson, “Sixty Years,” 101–102. 158 Charles Simpson, El Rodeo (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Limited, 1925), 29. 159 Four gouaches, along with several crayon portraits composed with red, green, and black crayon, are reproduced in color. 160 Simpson, El Rodeo, 38, 41, 92, 97. 161 Ibid., 86, 91. 162 Ibid., 84. 163 Fredriksson, “Sixty Years,” 103–104. 164 Burns, Transnational Frontiers, 161–62. Cody’s public taming performances are indebted to popular nineteenth-century demonstrations in the United States and England by noted “horse whisperers” John Solomon Rarey and Captain M. H. Hayes. On their taming techniques, see Sharon E. Creiger, “Horsebreakers, Tamers, and Trainers: An Historical, Psychological, and Social Review,” in Advances in Animal Welfare Science 1986/87, eds. Michael W. Fox and Linda D. Mickley (Dordrecht: Springer, 1987), 89–101. 165 R. B. Cunninghame Graham, introduction to El Rodeo, 11. 166 Ibid., 9. 167 Fredriksson, “Sixty Years,” 105. 168 Cunninghame Graham, introduction, 5–6. 169 Simpson, El Rodeo, 140; and Cunninghame Graham, introduction, 20. 170 Cunninghame Graham, introduction, 15. 171 Simpson, El Rodeo, 98, 101–02.

Bibliography Albers, Kate Palmer. Uncertain Histories: Accumulation, Inaccessibility, and Doubt in Contemporary Photography. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Allen, Michael. “The Rise and Decline of the Early Rodeo Cowgirl: The Career of Mabel Strickland, 1916–1941.” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 83, no. 4 (1992): 122–127. Allen, Michael. Rodeo Cowboys in the North American Imagination. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1998. Armitage, Shelley. “Western Heroines: Real and Fictional Cowgirls.” Heritage of the Great Plains 12, no. 2 (Spring 1979): 12–20. Arnold Arluke and Robert Bogdan, “Taming the Wild: Rodeo as a Human-Animal Metaphor,” in Sport, Animals, and Society, eds. James Gillett and Michelle Gilbert. New York: Routledge, 2014. 15–34. Arnold, Janet. “Dashing Amazons: The Development of Women’s Riding Dress, c. 1500–1900.” In Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning, and Identity, edited by Amy de la Haye and Elizabeth Wilson. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999. 10–29. Ashby, Mrs. Grant E. Rodeo Collection. Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK. Baumler, Ellen. “The Ladies Busted Broncs,” Montana, Women’s History Matters. July 24, 2014. http://montanawomenshistory.org/the-ladies-busted-broncs/.

124 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well Branfield, John. Charles Simpson: Painter of Animals & Birds, Coastline & Moorland. Bristol: Sansom & Co., 2007. Burbick, Joan. Rodeo Queens: On the Circuit with America’s Cowgirls. New York: PublicAffairs, 2002. Burgess, Marilyn. “From Noble to Notorious: The Western Adventure Heroine.” In Indian Princesses and Cowgirls: Stereotypes from the Frontier, edited by Gail Guthrie Valaskakis and Marilyn Burgess. Montréal: OBORO, 1992. 47–79. Burns, Emily C. Transnational Frontiers: The American West in France. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018. Burr, Martha. “The American Cowgirl: History and Iconography, 1860-Present.” PhD diss., New York University, 1998. Cahn, Susan K. “From the ‘Muscle Moll’ to the ‘Butch’ Ballplayer: Mannishness, Lesbianism, and Homophobia in the U.S. Women’s Sport.” Feminist Studies 19, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 343–368. Cahn, Susan K. Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sport. New York: The Free Press, 1994. Creiger, Sharon E. “Horsebreakers, Tamers, and Trainers: An Historical, Psychological, and Social Review.” In Advances in Animal Welfare Science 1986/87, edited by Michael W. Fox and Linda D. Mickley. Dordrecht: Springer, 1987. 89–101. Cunninghame Graham, R.B. Introduction to El Rodeo. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Limited, 1925. 1–22. Dean, Frank E. Trick and Fancy Riding. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, Ltd, 1997. Dippie, Brian W., ed. Paper Talk: Charlie Russell’s American West. Fort Worth: Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, 1979. Doubleday, Ralph Russell. File. Don C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK. Durham, Philip and Everett L. Jones. The Negro Cowboys. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily edition.“Summary of Today’s Round-Up Results.” September 23, 1915. East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily edition. “Last Day of Results at a Glance.” September 25, 1915. East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily edition. “12,000 People Cheer Contests.” September 25, 1915. East Oregonian (Pendleton, OR), daily evening edition. “Championships Won at Round-Up.” September 27, 1915. Eckley, Wilton. The American Circus. Boston: Twain Publishers, 1984. Fisher, Juni. “The Last Ride of Bonnie McCarroll,” True West, June 27, 2011, https:// truewestmagazine.com/the-last-ride-of-bonnie-mccarroll/. Fredriksson, Kristine. “Sixty Years of American Rodeo in England, 1887–1947.” In The Westerners Brand Book, No. 16, edited by Raymond F. Wood. Glendale, CA: Westerners, Los Angeles Corral, 1982. Gaston, Joseph P. The Centennial History of Oregon, 1811–1912. 2 vols. Chicago: S.J. Clarke Publishing Co., 1912. George, Mary Carolyn Hollers. Mary Bonner: Impressions of a Printmaker. San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1982. Goldstein-Shirley, David. “Black Cowboys in the American West: An Historical Review,” Ethnic Studies Review 20 (1997): 79–89. Grafe, Steven L. Peoples of the Plateau: the Indian Photographs of Lee Moorhouse, 1898–1915. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005. Graflex and Graflex and Graphic Cameras. Rochester, NY: Folmer & Schwing Co., July 1, 1906, http://www.piercevaubel.com/cam/catalogs/1906folmer&schwinglp801.htm.

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 125 Hanesworth Collection. American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY. Hassrick, Peter H. Charles M. Russell. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989. Hearne, Vicki. Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994. Hedenberg, Susanna and Gertrude Pfister. “Écuyères and ‘Doing Gender’: Presenting Femininity in a Male Domain—Female Circus Riders, 1800–1920.” Scandinavian Sport Studies Forum 3 (2012): 25–47. Henneman, Jennifer R. “Her Representation Precedes Her: Transatlantic Celebrity, Portraiture, and Visual Culture, 1865–1890.” PhD diss., University of Washington, 2016. Iverson, Peter and Lina MacCannell, Riders of the West: Portraits from Indian Rodeo. Vancouver: Greystone Books, 1999. Joe Peterson, “Rogue River Round-Up,” Oregon Encyclopedia, accessed December 16, 2020, https://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/rogue_river_roundup/#.X9rKt157mis. Jordan, Teresa. Cowgirls: Women of the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992. Karr, Elizabeth. The American Horsewoman. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1884. Klette, William “The Saga of Vera Mac.” Western Horseman 34, no. 1 (January 1969): 7476, 141. Laegreid, Renée M. Rodeo Royalty in the American West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. Lawrence, Elizabeth Atwood. Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and Tame. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982. Lecompte, Mary Lou. Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1993. Liles, Deborah M. “Before Emancipation: Black Cowboys and the Livestock Industry.” In Black Cowboys in the American West: On the Range, On the Stage, Behind the Badge, edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Michael N. Searles. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. 19–30. Linderman, Jim. “Striking Photographs by John Stryker.” Dull Tool Dim Bulb, accessed October 23, 2020, http://dulltooldimbulb.blogspot.com/2009/12/striking-photographs-byjohn-stryker.html#.Udx5haxXdii. Los Angeles Times. The Lancer. March 19, 1905. Los Angeles Times. “The Montana Girl.” August 30, 1897. Marra, Kim. “Riding, Scarring, Knowing: A Queerly Embodied Performance Historiography.” Theatre Journal 64, no. 4 (December 2012): 489–511. McGinnis, Vera. Rodeo Road: My Life as a Pioneer Cowgirl. New York: Hastings House Publishers, 1974. Mecklenburg-Faenger, Amy. “Trifles, Abominations, and Literary Gossip: Gendered Rhetoric and Nineteenth-Century Scrapbooks.” Genders 55 (2012). https://www.colorado.edu/ gendersarchive1998–2013/2012/02/01/trifles-abominations-and-literary-gossip-genderedrhetoric-and-nineteenth-century. Mileaf, Janine A. “Poses for the Camera: Eadweard Muybridge’s Studies of the Human Figure.” American Art 16, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 31–53. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, no. 3 (October 1975): 6–18. Muybridge, Eadweard. Muybridge’s Complete Human and Animal Locomotion, All 781 Plates from the 1887 Animal Locomotion. 3 vols. New York: Dover, 1979. “New World Champions Made Today.” East Oregonian, September 25, 1915. Palen, J.S. Collection. American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY. Patton, Paul. “Language, Power, and the Training of Horses.” In Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, edited by Cary Wolfe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. 83–99.

126 A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well Patton, Tracey Owens and Sally M. Schedlock. Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo: Breaking Away from the Ties of Sexism and Racism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. Patton, Tracey Owens and Sally M. Schedlock. “Let’s Go, Let’s Show, Let’s Rodeo: African Americans and the History of Rodeo.” Journal of African American History 96, no. 4 (Fall 2011): 503–521. Pearson, Demetrius W. “Shadow Riders of the Subterranean Circuit: A Descriptive Account of Black Rodeo in the Texas Gulf Coast Region.” In Black Cowboys in the American West: On the Range, On the Stage, Behind the Badge, edited by Bruce A Glasrud and Michael N. Searles. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. 101–113. Pflaser, I.L. “The Rodeo Postcard King.” Western Horseman, January 1973. Pierce, Jason E. Making the White Man’s West: Whiteness and the Creation of the American West. Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 2016. Porter, Willard H. “When They Took the West to London.” True West 32, no. 9 (September 1985): 10-17. Porter, Willard H. “Shooting the Rodeo: The Story of R.R. ‘Dub’ Doubleday.” True West 36, no. 4 (April 1989): 40-43. Rand, Charles E. “From Canton to Council Bluffs: The Rodeo Road Less Traveled by R. R. Doubleday.” Unpublished manuscript. 2004. Ralph Russell Doubleday File. : Donald C. and Elizabeth M. Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Oklahoma City, OK Renner, Ginger K. “Charlie and the Ladies in His Life,” Montana The Magazine of Western History 34, no. 3 (Summer 1984): 34–61. Roach, Joyce Gibson. The Cowgirls. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 1990. Rupp, Virgil. Let ‘er Buck! A History of the Pendleton Round-Up. Pendleton, OR: Pendleton Round-Up Association, 1985. Sanderson, Linda Rose. “‘A Ringside Seat to Paradise’: Rodeo Cowgirls, The New Woman, and The Construction of a Usable Past.” PhD diss., University of California, Davis, 2006. Schmittou, Douglas A. and Michael H. Logan. “Fluidity of Meaning: Flag Imagery in Plains Indian Art.” American Indian Quarterly 26, no. 4 (Autumn 2002): 559–604. Scofield, Rebecca Elena. “Riding Bareback: Rodeo Communities and the Construction of American Gender, Sexuality, and Race in the Twentieth Century.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2015. Simpson, Charles. El Rodeo. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Limited, 1925. Slotkin, Richard. Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the Western Frontier, 1600–1800. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1973. Smith, A. Morton. “Circus Stars of Yesteryears, VIII. Fred and Ella Bradna,” Hobbies, March 1951, 26-27. Troccoli, Joan Carpenter, ed. Charles M. Russell: The Women in His Life and Art. Exh. cat. Great Falls, MT: C.M. Russell Museum, 2018. Truettner, William H. and Nancy K. Anderson, eds. The West as America: Reinterpreting Images for the Frontier, 1820–1920. Exh. cat. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991. Tyler, Ron. Rodeo of John Addison Stryker. Austin, Texas: The Encino Press, 1977. Vaught, Jeannette. “All Hat, No Cattle.” Review of Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo. HumAnimalia 4, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 150–153. Vaught, Jeannette. “Science, Animals, and Profit-Making in the American Rodeo Arena.” PhD diss., University of Texas-Austin, 2015. Vaule, Rosamond B. As We Were: American Photographic Postcards, 1905–1930. Boston: David R. Godine, 2004. Weil, Kari. “Purebreds and Amazons: Saying Things with Horses in Late Nineteenth-Century France.” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 11, no. 1 (1999): 1–37.

A Girl Who Can Handle a Horse Well 127 Wetherell, Donald G. “Making Tradition: The Calgary Stampede, 1912–1939.” In Icon, Brand, Myth: The Calgary Stampede, edited by Max Foran. Edmonton: AU Press, 2008. 21–45. Wooden, Wayne S. and Gavin Ehringer. Rodeo in America: Wranglers, Roughstock, and Paydirt. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Woznica, Ellie, ed. Horsewomanship in 19th-Century America. Alfred, NY: Whitlock Publishing, 2017.

4

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

In 1967, Bay Area Photorealist painter Richard McLean (1934–2014) initiated a series of paintings based on photographs from popular American horse magazines. He precisely rendered the sparkling smiles of riders and handlers, gleaming tack, and glossy, sometimes strangely fuzzy equine coats. For McLean, it was an experiment in how to paint the horse afresh, when the animal’s use value had dwindled in American life and when conventional equine portraiture held little relevance to an art world increasingly interested in conceptual art and new media. Five years later, the artist began traveling to horse shows to take his own photographs to use as source material. McLean’s Photorealist paintings should be understood as more than postmodern pastiche or photographs morphed into painted exactitude. Oscillating between ar­ rangements of still life objects, representations of the horse in contemporary life, and indices of human–animal relationships, McLean’s images record the formations of American equestrian sport and horse show culture at a particular historical moment in the second half of the twentieth century. In doing so, they act as documents, recouping the very nature of the photograph—as referential of and gaining potency from its subject—in this case the horse—that Photorealism frequently sought to destabilize.

McLean Chooses the Horse Despite McLean’s youth spent “milking cows, stacking hay, and going to rodeos” in the rural Pacific Northwest, he did not paint his first horse until 1967 while living in California’s Bay Area.1 McLean earned his BFA at the California College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC) in 1958 and his MFA at Mills College in 1962; he then taught at CCAC before taking a permanent post at San Francisco State University. Teachers and colleagues such as Richard Diebenkorn, Nathan Oliveira, and Robert Arneson shaped his early exploration of figuration and landscape, but it was his close friend, the artist Robert Bechtle, who motivated his shift towards Photorealism. Beguiled by the matter-of-fact, deadpan attitude of Bechtle’s paintings, McLean too began copying from photographs. He chose, however, a different entrée into 1960s middleclass culture, shirking the more typical Photorealist subjects of suburban and city streets, cars, and fast food joints, for a more romantic trope: the horse.2 No one in the Bay Area, he felt, was making art about anything outside the city limits. Nor had any serious animal painting occurred since Rosa Bonheur.3 At the Berkeley Gallery in 1966, he exhibited a series of Pop-inflected paintings of cows, rams, and chickens suspended in vivid color fields.4 The following year he created a painting from his DOI: 10.4324/9781351034340-5

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 129 own snapshot of friend and printmaker John Ihle astride a horse and immediately recognized a compelling subject: “I mean, a cow’s a cow anywhere, but the horse and its historical significance, its mythology, is much, much more.”5 Turning his focus to the animal coincided, serendipitously, with his discovery of equine journals, introduced to him by a student’s mother, a magazine distributor. McLean quickly found he liked the “unfamiliarity of someone else’s photograph,” which he amplified through his technical and formal process.6 In Bechtle’s watercolor A Painter in His Studio (Richard McLean) (1995), created for McLean for his re­ tirement from teaching, Bechtle depicts McLean at work on the oil painting Lexington Winter (1970).7 With a magazine reproduction secured to the center of the canvas, McLean carefully colors in the horse’s body, steadying his paintbrush with a maulstick. McLean’s painting of a dark bay colt in profile, held by a Black groom, is nearly identical to the source photograph, the only noticeable change a greater ex­ panse of blue sky for adapting the rectangular source photograph to a square 5 × 5 foot canvas. In this instance, McLean worked from a color image, but he also reg­ ularly used black and white photographs, even preferring them because of the ubi­ quity of bad color reproductions throughout the horse magazines. He would sometimes write the magazines to request the original 8 × 10 inch photograph if he found the magazine reproduction too small to detect detail or the color seemed off.8 McLean’s first artworks sourced from magazine imagery adhered to familiar ex­ amples of sporting art that commemorate Thoroughbred racehorses at the stable or racecourse, like Lexington Winter or Native Diver (1968; figure 4.1), which portrays the charismatic champion gelding with jockey up in the winner’s circle at Los Angeles’s Hollywood Park after winning a Hollywood Gold Cup.9 Yet in breed publications like The Arabian Horse and Quarter Horse Journal McLean discovered

Figure 4.1 Richard Thorpe McLean, Native Diver. Lithograph on paper [after a 1968 painting]. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. John Barton Payne Fund. Photo: David Stover. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

130 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

Figure 4.2 Richard Thorpe McLean, Rustler Charger. 1971. Oil on canvas. Bridgeman Images.

an equally compelling trove of source material representing not only Thoroughbred racehorses, but also the Quarter Horses, Appaloosas, cowboys, and cowgirls of modern-day, breed horse show culture, where riders pose astride horses, collecting trophies and ribbons as in Rustler Charger (1971; figure 4.2), or handlers show off horses as in Mackey Marie (1971; figure 4.3). Though such paintings echo AngloEuropean images of fine horseflesh and costumed equestrians, by featuring Western breeds and riding styles in contemporary contexts, they also transport Old West frontier traditions to New West contexts. After McLean purchased a camera in 1972 he began traveling to breed shows and racetracks around the Bay Area, “haunting the aisles between the stables” for a good photograph.10 He soon realized he liked photographing horses alone, standing in front of barns and horse trailers, although he often included the occasional chair, person, or dog. Gone in Jack Magill’s Bourbon Jet (1980; figure 4.4) are earlier artworks’ broad expanses of sky, replaced with a thin strip of red-trimmed curtain stretching across the stable’s overhang. Bourbon Jet’s body nearly fills the frame, a result of the artist’s increasing ease with his subjects and capacity to photograph them in closer proximity. McLean once tried painting horses in pastures, but quickly discovered that his horses needed to “operate in essentially artificial environments,” denatured from the verdant environs in which historical animaliers often set their horseflesh. Standing placidly in parking lots, concrete courtyards, and steel fenced arenas, often surrounded by what the artist considered “ugly” “plastic buckets and hoses and junk,” McLean’s horses belong to neither an elite realm nor romanticized past, but to an everyday America vividly depicted by the artist’s fellow Photorealists.11

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 131

Figure 4.3 Richard Thorpe McLean, Mackey Marie. 1971. Oil on canvas. Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York.

Figure 4.4 Richard Thorpe McLean, Jack Magill’s Bourbon Jet. 1980. Print [after a 1979 painting]. Collection of the author.

132 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

Horses Acting as Painting Many Photorealists chose subjects that muddied historical genres of landscape, ci­ tyscape, and portraiture by transforming contemporary suburban streets and people, urban buildings, and even airstream trailers into formal arrangements of flattened, slickly rendered objects. Or, in painting store windows and vanity tables, they created still lifes of things inherently composed as such. Beyond the revision of historical genres, however, much of the critical literature on Photorealism stresses its re­ lationships to Modernism, Pop, Minimalism, Postmodernism, and the rise of pho­ tography in the postwar art world. Photorealism both validated the photographic medium and usurped its primacy by transforming the image once again into an auratic object depicting a new visual reality. At the same time, Photorealists endorsed the media age by using many of the same everyday subjects as Pop artists—billboards and consumer goods—and copied imagery directly, often using commercial techni­ ques. Unlike modern abstractionists, they painted things, but like them, they stressed the materiality of the canvas and the virtuosity of paint as a medium. Photorealists too, as Minimalists did, professed their detachment from their subject matter.12 Photorealism’s inherent tensions between the real and illusory, and between re­ plication and invention, created a quandary for audiences. Reaction to the flurry of the 1970s Photorealist exhibitions in New York, Paris, London, and Germany was de­ cidedly mixed. Members of both the international and American art press disparaged artists’ uniform treatment of both the provocative and bland and impugned the art as expensive, commercialized schtick that pandered to the masses.13 Louis Meisel, the New York gallerist credited with coining the term “Photorealism” and perhaps the style’s most ardent supporter, later dismissed such condemnations as the result of an entrenched culture of Greenbergian criticism where art necessitated an informed in­ termediary to interpret its meaning. Dispensing with trappings of high art and elitism, Photorealism proved popular with the public precisely because it needed no explana­ tion.14 Some American and European scholars also touted Photorealism’s simplicity as a strength, interpreting its transformations of banal, ordinary snapshots into meticu­ lously rendered paintings as sophisticated meditations on the Real.15 In so doing, they promoted Photorealism as an avant-garde endeavor, embedded within modernist ex­ plorations of optical and reproductive technologies and the history of perception. Frederic Jameson would later advance Photorealism as a thoroughly postmodern practice, likening the Photorealistic cityscape to that of the simulacrum, where, through its hallucinatory and splendiferous “derealization of the whole surrounding world of everyday reality,” the “world thereby momentarily loses its depth and threatens to become a glossy skin, a stereoscopic illusion”—the radical eclipse of Nature itself.16 A world in which painted surface becomes a substitute for reality, moving beyond trompe l’oeil, corresponds to one of McLean’s early assessments of his paintings: “It’s not just a blown up photo. I try to get a more heightened sense of reality, to make it a more startling and palpable thing to react to than a photograph is.”17 He achieves this through exquisite paint handling and coloration, where human figures, animals, and objects become artificially alive, revealing the canvas as artifice and forcing viewers to see what interests the artist: a shaft of sunlight, the wet shine of animal’s coat, or a wrinkle of fabric.18 In this way, content can be said to take a backseat to form in so far as the point of a Photorealist painting is not to document particular things or fool us into believing they are real, but to render their appearance as a field

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 133 19

of visual information. Those things that are represented—horses, cars, and lunch counters—are not the bearers of meaning. Indeed the very precision or literalness of Photorealist imagery, according to Linda Nochlin, resists iconographic or emblematic interpretation: anything that might give rise to narrative import, symbolic sig­ nificance, or psychological implication is assimilated to opaque, continuous surface.20 Linda Chase even warns that paying too much attention to Photorealist subject matter runs the risk of “falling into the trap of significations,” or letting “the sup­ posed meaning of the object obscure its presence.”21 Yet in looking back over the images produced throughout the period—cars, ve­ getables, fruit, gumball machines, diners, suburbanites, hipsters, hippies, and horses—Photorealism offers greater opportunities to tease out its rich socio-historical references to product varieties, politics, familial life, subcultures, identity, and sport. Consequently, scholars have begun to recast the movement through a historical lens, stressing why its content mattered then and there. Samantha Baskind reads Audrey Flack’s tableaux as richly personal explorations of identity, indicative of the artist’s Jewish heritage.22 David Lubin contextualizes Photorealism’s exposition of the image as a social construction within the political upheavals of Watergate as debates about public trust and truth took on new urgency. And both he and Katherine Hauser place Bechtle’s portrayals of the American family alongside popular television shows like An American Family, the 1973 reality-based documentary that followed the lives of a California couple and their five children over the course of seven months, and All in the Family, Norman Lear’s sitcom about generational discord.23 Bridget Gilman perhaps goes the furthest to locate Photorealism, and McLean’s art especially, within the specific cultural and geographic landscape of the West Coast Bay Area, in what she calls “environmental friction zones,” where urban and suburban sprawl meet rural countryside.24 Such interpretations suggest how Photorealist subject matter should be considered on its own terms, with resulting benefits that offset any risks. So then what about horses? In describing his horses, Mclean once said that they “act” as painting.25 They do so by performing droll send-ups of aristocratic sporting art and Western Americana for a contemporary, middle-class, urban art world. Indeed McLean felt his equine subjects’ success depended on their literal and figural distance from contemporary art-viewing audiences and art world locations like New York City or San Francisco. Had he lived in the Southwest or rural countryside—sites connected to equine genres—he explained, his subjects could not “act” appropriately. To urban and urbane art critics and audiences—horse world outsiders—the percep­ tion of horse people as “freaks” engaged in absurd customs of dressing up in fancy cowboy gear and parading around in a circle on horses made for good painting.26 But what if we transport McLean’s paintings into just those contexts he discounted? To Texas, Oklahoma, the English countryside, or rural northern California? To equine enthusiasts and owners, or to collectors of the equestrian pictures his paintings so clearly riff upon? For horse world insiders, McLean’s subjects are not “appropriately embarrassing”27 or strange, but deeply familiar: posing for the camera, seemingly invested in their immortalization quite unlike other Photorealist subjects. McLean painted his first horse, the Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, on commission around 1987.28 He completed several other commissions over the next decades, often flying to his patrons’ stables or estates to photograph horses on site. With these paintings, coming later in his career, the critical distance deemed so central to Photorealism effectively collapses. Subjects, audiences, and locations align. McLean’s paintings

134 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts become those of the equestrian and equine painting traditions they first sought to parody. So, instead of high camp send ups, what about high seriousness in how McLean’s horse paintings not only re-invent a waning historical genre and, like their predecessors, reproduce socio-historical transformations in contemporary equine sport—the rise of the breed show, the status of the show horse, or the prevalence of women in equestrian sport? McLean’s paintings distinguish key aspects of modernday equine cultures, where artifice and earnestness collide.

The Horse Show and its Audiences Rustler Charger, Mackey Marie, and Peppy Command29 (1975; Berardo Collection) represent Appaloosa and Quarter Horses with their riders and handlers competing in horse shows. The modern-day horse show emerged from a blend of the nineteenthand early twentieth-century traditions of the horse show, state and county fair, and stock show. The first horse shows date to the 1850s.30 They provided venues for horsemen and women to compete for prizes in events such as pleasure, jumping, driving, and showing-in-hand. They generally welcomed all breeds, although some classes specified Thoroughbreds, trotters, saddle horses, heavy draughts, or cobs. In cities, horse shows proved popular with audiences, for as the horse’s visibility de­ clined in urban life, it saw its renewal in spectacular, modern, equine-centered sporting and leisure rituals like racing, city park carriage driving, coaching parades, and bridle path excursions. The New York Horse Show (later known as the National Horse Show), founded in 1883, became part of an East Coast circuit replete with blue-blooded boards, stockholders, extravagantly attired patrons and spectators, expensive horses, and elegant arenas like Madison Square Garden.31 Local state and county fairs and livestock shows, however, persisted as the better opportunity for the average American to see and flaunt horseflesh. Fairs, organized by agricultural societies, often included work horse exhibits and shows as part of their broader function to advance agricultural industries by displaying machinery, pro­ duce, crops, and livestock. Similarly, major stock shows, which grew up in western cities from a need to develop alternative livestock markets to compete with Chicago, held livestock and equine competitions. In 1896, the second Ft. Worth Stock Show occurred with the National Livestock Exchange. Denver held its first stock show in 1906 along with a stockmen’s convention. Big stock shows also incorporated major rodeos—vestiges of cowhand skills fast disappearing in the New West.32 Western riding competitions, like reining, cutting, or pleasure classes, developed from these Western-themed events. Judged competition, whether at horse shows, fairs, or livestock exhibitions, often worked in tandem with breed registries to standardize breeds and develop animal industries. The earliest breed registries were for Thoroughbreds, trotters, and Saddlebreds33, the traditional racing, carriage, and saddle breeds of the East, but after the Great Depression, western breeders and ranchmen founded organizations like the Appaloosa Horse Club (ApHC) in 1938 and the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) in 1940 to ensure the continuity and purity of Native American and cow horse bloodlines.34 Breed associations soon commenced specialized pub­ lications for their members that, like their sporting press precursors, feature articles about breed history and horse care, as well as show results and horse advertise­ ments.35 They also organized breed-specific shows and classes that grew in popularity

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 135 with the national, circuit, and world shows and championships. The sign flanking Rustler Charger, a champion reining horse, proclaims the 23rd National Appaloosa Horse Show in Huron, South Dakota. The banner behind Peppy Command an­ nounces his title as one of the Quarter Horse champions of the 1974 Florida Gold Coast show circuit. Although little scholarship exists on the general entity of the horse show because of its countless variations, histories of many long-running events like the National Horse Show, the Devon Horse Show and County Fair, or the Upperville Colt and Horse Show make clear the importance of these institutions not only to local horsepersons, but also to public life, especially in the prewar period when many parts of the country remained agricultural. Local horse show results made front-page news and winners held high acclaim in communities.36 For McLean’s art world audiences, his sleek horses with their gussied up riders and handlers in Western costumes and silver tack may appear peculiar, enacting silly, bygone rituals. But for those still competing in shows—in whatever discipline or breed—McLean’s images resonate with our own com­ memorative images: those we keep in frames or albums and that are often reproduced in equine journals. Rustler Charger and Peppy Command represent the ubiquitous award presentation capping off an individual class or division. And Mackey Marie’s subjects don the expected poses of halter and showmanship classes, judged on the horse’s conformation or handler’s skills, epitomized by a photograph of me and my pony Thunder in the showring (figure 4.5). Even Satin Doll’s composition (1975; figure 4.6), of a woman in casual clothing astride a white horse in front of a row of stalls, which McLean likely based on his own photograph rather than a magazine re­ production, is recognizable as a show-related image, evidenced by the horse’s fancy silver filigree bridle and silver concho bit, as well as the flanking tack curtains embel­ lished with the Leavitt Training Stables name and string of ribbons that are customs stables use to distinguish and publicize their businesses and show successes.

Figure 4.5 Unknown photographer (Potter?), Thunder, Oklahoma City, OK. 1979. Color photograph.

136 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

Figure 4.6 Richard Thorpe McLean, Satin Doll. 1975. Watercolor on paper. Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York.

McLean’s initial audiences, however, weren’t equestrians. He thus chose source images that approximated recognizable models drawn from a wider art history—from sporting art, Western art, and equestrian portraiture. But in doing so, his paintings reveal how these models have continued to structure contemporary equine commemorative culture, wherein Appaloosa and Quarter Horse show horse champions are recast in compositions historically inhabited by Thoroughbred race­ horses, aristocratic mounts, and working cow ponies. In Rustler Charger, a lean, sharp-featured man wearing aviator sunglasses and sitting astride his Appaloosa accepts a trophy from a white-gloved cowgirl in a pair of tight, shiny bronze lamé pants. A rather conspicuous lariat circles the saddle horn. As a representation of a victorious cowboy and his reining horse, McLean’s painting via its underlying source photograph riffs on equestrian portraits of noblemen as well as cowboy pictures by artists like Frederic Remington, the modern-day horse show competitor reenacting the western practices of cattle wrangling that already in Remington’s day belonged to a distant past. But Rustler Charger too marks a specific moment through the flanking billboard that, while following period Photorealist fascination with vernacular sig­ nage, commemorates the location and date of the horse’s triumph, not unlike the

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 137 rubbing house and king’s stand on the famous English Newmarket course where Stubbs set horses like Gimcrack and Hambletonian (figure 1.5). Mackey Marie likewise relates to the equine portrait standard, where a groom holds a horse in profile. Indeed the Quarter Horse mare’s dumpy handler lightly clutches her lead much in the same fashion as the elegant Charles Stewart does with Medley in Edward Troye’s 1832 painting of the gray Thoroughbred (Medley and Groom; figure 1.2). Both horses need little guidance; they know how to pose. But whereas Medley stands in profile with one hind leg forward, Mackay Marie (her correct name according to her published pedigree) stands with her rear end slightly angled towards the viewer with all four legs forming a square, the proper show stance for her breed. This dif­ ference in stance reminds us how animal picturing has historically turned on both likeness and typology. Recall that Troye’s critics decried the accuracy of his nineteenth-century Thoroughbred portraits, alleging his equine bodies appeared in­ terchangeable with one another because the artist painted each horse similarly, with a full midsection, spindly legs, a straight shoulder, and a “plumed waterspout tail.” Troye historian Alexander Mackay-Smith countered, however, that these features, bred out of the modern-day Thoroughbred, characterized the antebellum type.37 The Quarter Horse is known for its compact body, muscled hindquarters, deep, sloping shoulder, and great heartgirth.38 Mackay Marie’s position, and subsequently McLean’s painting of her, emphasizes the importance of the hindquarters; thus with her powerful hind end atop perfectly straight and square legs, she expresses and perpetuates a breed ideal. McLean repeats similar poses in later paintings based on his own photographs. Without grooms or handlers, horses stand in profile, their con­ formation fully visible, indicating that McLean’s awareness of past equine picturing conventions endured as he snapped photographs at stables and shows around northern California. Still (Live) Animals It is perhaps by happenstance, though, rather than by intention that a McLean painting like Mackey Marie aligns as closely with those of historical animaliers who sought to exalt breed standards embodied in particular, notable horses. McLean’s paintings are not portraits. Horses’ identities mattered little to the artist. He used their names as titles only when they “had a kind of poetic lilt, a sometimes surprising meter” beyond what he could have dreamed up.39 Horses’ identities also meant little to his buyers, unlike the breeder, turf men, and aristocratic patrons of the past. German industrialist Peter Ludwig acquired Rustler Charger not because of the an­ imal’s acclaim as a champion reining horse, but because of his interest in Photorealism’s approach to documenting the reality of contemporary existence.40 McLean selected horses chiefly for their looks, and for how their photographic representation might translate into painting. Rustler Charger possesses some won­ derful compositional mirrorings, surely already there in its source photograph: the placement of woman’s feet and horse’s hooves, her hat’s and the trophy’s feather decorations, and even the horse itself complemented by its miniature version atop trophy. Or perhaps McLean was drawn to the dichotomy between the rugged cowboy and sexy trophy girl; or to the intricacy of Rustler Charger’s spotted coat. Animal coats are perfectly suited to Photorealist painterly treatments, similar to the glinting surfaces of shop windows, car hoods, and motorcycle chrome that occur

138 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts throughout the genre. And the “show horse” is inherently all about image, readied for display: legs, nose, and ears trimmed for sleekness, fed with special supplements to produce healthy bones and fine coat, bathed with color enhancing shampoos, and muscled up with carefully designed conditioning programs. For Rustler Charger, McLean worked from a black and white photograph, imagining the horse’s roan and white coloring.41 Period photographs indicate the horse’s coat was a slightly darker brown, his rump spots more distinct.42 Whether Dixie Coast (1980; figure 4.7) began as a black and white or color photograph, McLean’s lithograph, based on a 1974 painting, displays a lush harmony of jewel and metallic tones. The horse’s brilliant, burnished copper shade reflects the intense sun of the beach setting, while the colors of the woman’s costume coordinate with the white-capped, sapphire ocean waves. Bourbon Jet’s wet coat appears similarly luminescent, its dark bay color transformed into patches of bluish-black against the deep, royal blue of the stable backdrop. But flicks of mahogany in his dapples pick up the red halter fleece, curtain border, and

Figure 4.7 Richard Thorpe McLean, Dixie Coast. 1980. Lithograph [after a 1974 painting]. Collection of the author.

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 139

Figure 4.8 Richard Thorpe McLean, Draft with Orange Doors. 1976. Oil on canvas. 48 3/4 × 48 3/4 × 2 in. 2008.19.727. Yale University Art Gallery. Richard Brown Baker, B. A. 1935, Collection. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean.

stable accouterments. The animal’s body emerges through these scarlet anchors that, in turn, create focal points along his head, tail, belly, and back. Otherwise, the painting reads as much a formal study of colors and form as a representational image. Draft with Orange Doors (1976; figure 4.8), whose source came from McLean’s own camera rather than the pages of a magazine, epitomizes McLean’s comment that he often thought of the horse “formalistically, the way a painter might look at it, Whistler comes to mind.”43 Here the solitary animal’s white, rounded shape plays off the straight lines and angles of the vivid orange doors that repeat like a series of Donald Judd boxes (Untitled, 1971, Guggenheim Museum). Resonances with postwar art like Judd’s minimal constructions, or even Mark Rothko’s or Josef Albers’s painted orange rectangles and squares, also make me wonder whether McLean’s interest in horses tied to doors and walls was too a conscious riff on Jannis Kounellis’s Twelve Horses, the 1969 exhibition featuring live animals tethered inside an Italian art gallery for three consecutive days (they returned to a stable at night). Both Kounellis and McLean situate the horse in contemporary art “sites” where it doesn’t naturally belong: the white cube gallery and the Photorealist painting. But whereas Kounellis’s horses are live animals, experienced through sight, smell, and possibly even touch, McLean’s white draft horse exists as a field of visual informa­ tion. The painting’s combination of neutral-colored horse and bright, saturated backdrop creates a study of visual contrast, an effect McLean repeated in a lithograph after his painting Kahlua Lark (1980; figure 4.9), by placing a dark chestnut Quarter

140 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

Figure 4.9 Richard Thorpe McLean, Kahlua Lark. 1980. Lithograph [after a 1979 painting]. Collection of the author.

Horse against a red barn. Surrounding this horse, however, McLean, adds a cheap lawn chair on the left and shepherd dog on the right. He also places a tiny, clear plastic dish of dog food near the dog, so that square shapes frame rounded animal form to create a classical, triangular composition, with the horse’s head at the apex. McLean has described himself as a still life painter and his horses as still life ob­ jects; he even titled one of his early works, Still Life with Jockey (1969).44 Kahlua Lark encapsulates elements of the still life, with varying sized items arranged as a horizontal band similar to Raphaelle Peale’s apples, sherry glass, and tea cake laid out along a table (Still Life with Apples, Sherry, and Tea Cake, 1822; figure 4.10). Light glints off Peale’s glass of pale sherry like the sun reflects off McLean’s horse’s glossy shoulder and flank. But as with still life, especially in the vanitas tradition, McLean’s objects also play off one another symbolically. In Kahlua Lark, horse, dog, and chair express past and present: the horse and dog, the steadfast mount and loyal compa­ nion of historical cowboys and aristocrats, counteracted by the mid-century folding lawn chair, manufactured from aluminum tubes and light-weight nylon strips woven into a modernist grid. McLean includes similar chairs in several later paintings in­ debted to Bechtle’s Watsonville and Santa Barbara patio scenes.45 These depict

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 141

Figure 4.10 Raphaelle Peale, Still Life with Apples, Sherry, and Tea Cake. 1822. Oil on wood. Courtesy of National Gallery of Art, Washington. Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon.

showground parking lots and empty fields where horses stand tied to trailers, chain link fences block sky-blue vistas, and rubber mats, grooming boxes, empty soda cans, and crumpled fast food bags litter patchy turf. McLean’s sites are less identifiable than Bechtle’s suburban patios and yards. Not quite rural, urban, suburban, or in­ dustrial, they exist on the edges, where different postwar landscapes bleed into one another (Western Tableau with Italian Chairs, 1986).46 McLean’s empty chairs, however, seem perfectly comfortable in their settings. Placed near horses and horse trailers, they equate the showground to suburban yard, where equine pursuits have become part and parcel of middle-class lifestyles, akin to a neighborhood backyard barbecue or family lunch at McDonald’s. Along with patio chairs, horse trailers also gesture to those signs of postwar consumerism and leisure culture so redolent in Photorealist painting, the equine equivalent of the RV. McLean claimed he included trailers for explicitly formal purposes. Colored white, avocado green, canary yellow, and royal blue, they frame and set off bay, grey, and spotted horses. And with metal siding, windows, tires, and license plates, they are objects ripe for brandishing painterly virtuosity and ver­ isimilitude. McLean treats horses and trailers with equal care. In Whistlejacket (2011; figure 4.11), we cannot see the bay horse’s dappled flank, the sweat mark left by a girth, or his unruly, wiry mane and tail without also noticing the trailer’s scratched, cloudy window or rusty drips peppering its side. McLean believed this accumulation of visual detail, down to the minutest level, makes his paintings interesting. It does so by sustaining the painting’s curious relationship to the photograph, his ultimate

142 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

Figure 4.11 Richard Thorpe McLean, Whistlejacket. 2011. Oil on canvas. Collection of Ian McLean. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean.

“target.” His dictum “don’t leave anything out” sutures the painting to the parti­ cularity of the photograph.47 But at the same time, his uniform and descriptive excess—an information overload—cleaves his paintings from photography’s fleeting, transitory nature. Despite McLean’s careful attention to both animate horses and inanimate trailers, scholars like Chase are right in observing “how alive” McLean’s horses are, even at rest, with a compelling, organic presence that overcomes the “stasis of the metallic, rectilinear forms of the trailer.”48 This organic quality comes partly from the liveli­ ness of McLean’s paint handling of different, individualized horses with varied col­ oring, coat qualities, body types, and markings. It also occurs through his horses’ expressions as they turn to gaze at viewers. In Whistlejacket, the bay horse wrenches his head in the direction of what was likely the photographer-artist snapping his picture. McLean drew his title from George Stubbs’s majestic portrait of a racehorse descended from the Darley Arabian, one of the founding sires of the English Thoroughbred. Stubbs’s picture upended period hierarchies of painting, where an­ imal painting sat near the bottom, by both its sheer enormity, placing animals on the scale of historical and biblical human figures, and its depiction of the horse alone against an empty backdrop, a modish allusion to classical friezes (Whistlejacket, c. 1762; figure 4.12).49 McLean described his painting as “a flat out steal from” Stubbs because it shares “certain formalistic similarities with the Stubbs work.”50 Besides the fact that both horses are shown in profile with heads turned outwards, the two pictures appear to have little else in common. McLean’s painting is four feet long and oriented horizontally. Stubbs’s painting is over twice that size and oriented vertically. McLean’s Whistlejacket stands calmly in front of a blue and silver trailer that

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 143

Figure 4.12 George Stubbs, Whistlejacket. about 1762. Oil on canvas. 292 × 246.4 cm. NG 6569. © The National Gallery, London.

stretches from edge to edge of the canvas. Stubbs’s Whistlejacket levades majestically, with front legs raised, against a neutral background. McLean’s crisp, linear edges and bright, raking light also differ from Stubbs’s painterly contours and warm, effer­ vescent glow. Yet perhaps Mclean’s horse is more akin to Stubbs’s horse than the artist realized. Stubbs worked from life, painting animals with such scrupulous attention to anato­ mical detail and endowing them with an expressiveness and sentience as though “the judges of his work would be horses themselves.”51 Stubbs’s stallion’s veins bulge, his eyes flash white, and his nostrils flare. Indeed, according to legend, when Whistlejacket saw his painted visage as he crossed the stable yard, he mistook it for a rival horse. Stephen F. Eisenman characterizes Stubbs’s representation of feeling, responsive equines as a “symptom of the modern; of an artwork that insists on being seen for what it is, not as an allegory, symbol or metaphor.”52 Stubbs’s animals thus signal a new turn towards realism over idealism. Stubbs’s Whistlejacket may be an exemplary horse, but he is also an independent, sentient being. McLean’s Whistlejacket is far from a perfect specimen: he is a run-of-the-mill horse, tied to a trailer, patiently waiting. Painted from a photograph, McLean’s animal might instead be called a symptom of the postmodern, constructed through tropes of realism, from the actual horse into mechanically reproduced photograph into Photorealist painting. But McLean’s animal resists his simulacral underpinnings, as technologically

144 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts mediated reality, through both his particularity and gaze, which meets us with kind, intelligent eyes. He insists on being seen as a thing in and of himself, an animate presence rather than still life object, heightening the mimetic nature of the painting and its relationship to its referent, that horse having been there.53 That McLean began to be commissioned for equine portraits suggests such an interpretation of his paintings. Eleven years after his commission for the racehorse Seattle Slew, Mclean painted the first of two portraits of hunter-jumper horses for John and Tessa Robson of Hertfordshire, England.54 For commissions, he relied on his standard process, pho­ tographing horses on site, then creating the paintings in his studio. In Hertfordshire Morning (Capriccio for Tessa) (1998; figure 4.13), which McLean called the most elaborate picture he’d ever done, the big bay warmblood Aquarius stands in profile tied to a stall barn door, his ears pricked forward and his gaze directed beyond the left edge of the canvas. Behind the barn is a sliver of landscape revealing fenced, grassy paddocks, clear blue sky, and forested rolling hills. The yellowing grass and the traceclip outline on the horse’s dark, fuzzy coat signal a fall morning in the English countryside. The painting’s title may be a nod to James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s musical titles, but capriccio also implies whim and fantasy, and whereby McLean likely composited various photographs for this scene, his cluttered, chock-full-ofdetail finished canvas belies a flight of the imagination. He renders the varying, mottled reds, browns, grays, and greens of the barn’s rough brick siding and crum­ bling slate roof tiles—McLean remembered counting 1,100!55—and the round,

Figure 4.13 Richard Thorpe McLean, Hertfordshire Morning (Capriccio for Tessa). 1998. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean.

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 145 uneven cobblestones of the stable yard. In front of the horse, two dogs lie on a rug tossed on the ground. Three chickens—colored black, white, and brown—congregate around a drain near the horse’s feet, while another pecks the cobblestones at the corner of the barn. And “ugly” elements abound: a metal wheelbarrow, blue muck bucket, pitchfork, yellow water bucket, and two brooms. In theory, these ugly items might heighten the majesty of the horse, setting him apart from the surrounding detritus. But here they diffuse the animal’s charged presence. Joshua Shannon has argued that “context is the real subject” of McLean’s paintings since McLean lavishes every bit as much “care on the horse’s physical situation” as on its body, a departure from historical equine representation. McLean’s canvases exist in a liminal space between the photographic underlayer as specific and contingent and painted surface as stable and permanent, “dedicated to the jagged relationship between the pursuit of idealism in the horse and the everyday happenstance from which that pursuit is staged.”56Hertfordshire Morning becomes not a portrait of a horse, painted from life, but a picture with a horse, painted from a photograph. Yet whereas for Shannon, McLean’s pictures stage questions about the representational limits of photography versus painting in a postwar culture of image making, they also invite us to further examine McLean’s contexts, the equestrian sporting environments of the later twentieth century.

Highbrow or Middlebrow?: Eliding Race and Class Hertfordshire Morning’s grand scale, 4 × 6 feet, and the fact that McLean created it on commission intimate its subject is a show or sport horse, worthy of representation, and its patron(s) are affluent. Equestrian sports such as show jumping, dressage, driving, eventing, endurance, and reining—those disciplines featured in the Olympics and World Equestrian Games—are filled with affluent owners and riders, with names likes Onassis, Gates, Bloomberg, Romney, and Jobs. Like pedigreed racehorses, sport horses can cost in the six and seven figures, with board and training upwards of two thousand dollars per month. Show fees can also be steep, with only select classes like classics, futurities, stakes, or Grand Prix offering significant prize money to winners as a return on investment. Equine cultures, however, are by no means uniform even if horse ownership remains inaccessible to many. Different levels exist, with local shows, breed racing, trail and pleasure riding, and fairs whose ranks are populated not necessarily by extravagantly wealthy riders and owners, but by the middleclass—those that trailer in their horses for the day, or with their families camp in tents or horse trailer living quarters over weekends. McLean found all levels as he rifled through magazines or trekked to nearby stables, shows, and tracks. But whether McLean’s animal and human subjects are elite or ordinary, moneyed or middling, it’s usually hard to tell. Posed amongst stable clutter in front of a barn with worn slate roof tiles, Aquarius may cost thousands or merely hundreds. In Mackey Marie, the man’s wrinkled trousers, askew tie, and protruding belly coun­ teract the impressiveness of the gleaming horse beside him. Or what about the shining bay mare in Veronica’s Shanghai Duchess (1993; figure 0.1), who stands in front of an ordinary, blue and white two-horse trailer, or her accompanying human figure, a white-haired woman dressed casually in a golden tank top, dark jeans, and loafers? Valuable pedigreed show horse or backyard trail horse? Serious show competitor or casual weekend equestrian? Even when McLean depicts players in racing’s “sport of

146 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts kings,” his inclusion of Native Diver’s owner Louis K. Shapiro, a balding man in round glasses and baggy suit, and trophy presenter in a shiny, rust-colored suit, makes the sleek, jet black champion, the first California-bred racehorse to win a million dollars, appear the equal of the grey Appaloosa racehorse and futurity winner Zero Hancock that McLean portrayed elsewhere, who ran on minor tracks and earned a meager $20,660 over her career (Albuquerque, 1972).57 McLean’s inclusion of tawdry and melancholic elements—tacky clothing, dumpy countenances, artificial smiles, cheap trophies, and plastic buckets—muddies his subjects’ statuses or iden­ tities. Nochlin once stated that that the genre of Photorealism avoided probing issues of class and privilege.58 She’s right in part, that McLean’s paintings portray eques­ trianism as just another pursuit of everyday life by assimilating highbrow to mid­ dlebrow and vice versa. Yet in doing so, they thwart the very premise of historical equine representation, status making (of animal or owner), even when we know a source photograph or commission originated from such an aim. If McLean’s paintings elide issues of class inherent in equestrian sport, they also elide its white privilege. McLean’s human figures are overwhelmingly white, reflecting both art historical traditions as well as the make-up of contemporary equine sport. Chapter 1 describes the disappearance of Black men from American racing during the twentieth century, the result of structural changes including increased purses and the introduction of agents, racism, and Jim Crow segregation.59 Rodeo possesses its own history of exclusion, spurring the inception of both women’s-only groups, discussed in chapter 2, as well as Native American and Black cowboy and cowgirl organizations promoting the history and ongoing existence of horsepersons of color.60 It comes as no surprise then that segregation also affected the horse show and many shows ef­ fectively prohibited Black Americans as both competitors and spectators until well after the middle of the twentieth century. In response, Black Americans, as early as 1919, formed such organizations as the Orange [County, Virginia] Colored Horse Show and Racing Association.61 Colored Horse Show organizers even invited boxer Joe Lewis, an avid equestrian who organized his own all-Black horse shows and operated a Detroit area stable from 1939 to 1944, to bring his horses one year.62 Yet today, as Melvin Cox, founder of multimedia production group SportsQuestInternational, explains, equestrian sports still conspicuously lack “people of color in the ranks of riders, owners, trainers, breeders, veterinarians, farriers, nutritionists, sponsors, spectators and members of the equestrian media (particularly in the United States). Conversely, there is an overrepresentation as grooms, nannies, hot walkers and stall muckers.”63 McLean’s paintings broadly conform to Cox’s observations, chiefly picturing white people riding or milling about horses. And despite his focus on barns and stable settings, images of laborers remain rare. A Black groom holds a horse in one of Mclean’s earliest canvases, Lexington Winter, while two Latino grooms wrap a horse’s legs in Lauralei (1996), a painting created nearly thirty years later.64 For the most part, the artist avoids representations of any people engaged in actual physical work. Rather labor, so important to caring for, preparing, transporting, and riding horses, lurks in the shadows, implied in stable environments with horses with wet coats, braided manes, and tail sets alongside pitchforks, grooming boxes, and feed buckets. McLean’s images thus naturalize the horse as an object of human control and contemplation. They also support another of Nochlin’s related assessments of Photorealism: that a key difference distinguishing it from its previous nineteenth- and

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 147

Figure 4.14 Richard Thorpe McLean, Chub’s Powderface. 1969. Oil on canvas. Private col­ lection. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean.

early twentieth-century realisms is its patent disinterest in the working classes. Where, she asks, are the fast-food workers at Bechtle’s Foster Freezes or the shop attendants in Richard Estes’s retail stores? Photorealism’s preference instead for monotonous, deadpan scenes of signage, buildings, cars, fast food establishments, horses and iso­ lated individuals (even when part of a group or couple) avoids challenging the systems of power that mediate and sustain it.65 When McLean does portray nonwhite riders, they occur in limited roles, con­ forming to familiar historical types rooted in art history and popular culture like Still Life with Black Jockey (1969) or Chub’s Powderface (1969; figure 4.14), another early painting depicting a Native American performer and Appaloosa horse. Dressed in a deerskin jacket and suede moccasins, the actor-historian Richard Spencer sits astride Chub’s Powderface in a dusty lot, an expanse of prairie in the distance. Spencer, who adopted the Cherokee name “Shatka Bear Step,” performed at fairs and shows across the country under the sponsorship of the ApHC, educating the public about the history of the breed and signing the Lord’s Prayer in Native American sign language.66 With his son, the editor and publisher of Western Horseman magazine during the 1950s and 1960s, Spencer helped revitalize cultural interest in the Appaloosa, a breed that descended from the Nez Perce tribe’s horses that were largely obliterated in the Nez Perce War of 1877.67 Today the Nimiiippu people of the Nez Perce tribal nation remain active in Appaloosa horse breeding, and appear frequently in exhibitions and parades. The horse’s cultural heritage also continues to be pro­ moted in costume classes at horse shows and historical reenactments where white people—in elaborate gestures of cultural appropriation—dress up as Native Americans and may, when prompted by judges, recite the history of “their” costume, tribe, or horse.

148 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

Figure 4.15 Frederic Remington, A Cold Morning on the Range. ca. 1904. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of American Museum of Western Art—The Anschutz Collection. Photo: William J. O’Connor.

For his painting, McLean removed his source photograph’s pickup truck and trailer to emphasize horse and rider amidst an iconic western landscape.68 In doing so, he deliberately alludes to the late nineteenth-century Western types like Remington’s “braves,” “chiefs,” and “half-breeds” mounted on Paint and Appaloosa Indian po­ nies on the open prairies. McLean’s landscape, composed of pale lavenders, blues, and yellows, also owes a debt to Remington’s sunny color palette in such paintings as Cold Morning on the Range (1904; figure 4.15). Elements of theatricality, including the rider’s “native” costume, the horse’s silver laden tack, and the composition’s shallow space, formed by compressing dusty lot, prairie landscape, and sky into horizontal bands to resemble a stage set, further suggest popular culture’s ongoing fascination with Remington’s heavily mythologized West. Spencer, as Shatka-BearStep, becomes the Native American foil to the white cowboy star—like Tonto to the Lone Ranger—in one of McLean’s early horse canvases (Synbad’s Mt. Rainer, 1968; figure 4.16). Flanked by a scenic backdrop of the glowing sun setting over a majestic peak, the man, in a cream-colored outfit riding a white Arabian, personifies the heroic cowboys of Hollywood lore. It becomes evident that McLean’s depictions of non­ white subjects thus resulted not from any significant visibility in the equine sporting world or its accompanying media representations, but because they resembled fa­ miliar tropes of men and horses found in fine art and popular culture: the dutiful Black jockey and stoic Native American as easily recognizable as the gallant white cowboy.

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 149

Figure 4.16 Richard Thorpe McLean, Synbad’s Mt. Ranier. 1968. Oil on canvas. Private collection. Courtesy of Caitlin McLean for the Estate of Richard McLean.

(White) Women and Horses: Trophy Girls, Pageant Contestants, and Show Competitors So what about McLean’s representations of women? They are always white; they also conform, in most instances, to how women have often been represented in sport: as signs of (white) beauty, femininity, and athleticism, always in tension. In early paintings, he often depicts women in ornamental roles, as “trophy girls” presenting awards to male equestrians, dressed more conservatively but scarcely different from cheerleaders, cycling’s podium girls, or the scantily clad women announcing the next rounds in boxing or wrestling matches. In Foxy Mac (1973; figure 4.17), an attractive teenage girl bestows a prize ribbon on a teenage boy and his mare. The girl’s long straight hair, parted down the middle, and style of clothing betray the era. Apart from her cowboy boots, she is dressed like an average California teenager in brown jeans and a grayish-blue t-shirt with rainbow-colored trim worn over a white, long-sleeve turtle-neck. But underneath the seemingly wholesome scene lurks a latent eroticism in the way the girl’s t-shirt hangs loosely over her breasts, faintly outlining her nipples. Her straight-legged jeans are loose below the knee but quite tight near her crotch, their creases evocatively pointing to the slight gap above the point where her thighs touch. An inverted triangular-shaped shadow cast by the t-shirt’s hem draws further attention to this region, suggesting what lies beneath. Rustler Charger’s trophy pre­ senter exudes more explicit sex appeal in her curve-hugging lamé trousers, their stitching suggestively following the shape of her buttocks and thigh. With her

150 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

Figure 4.17 Richard Thorpe McLean, Foxy Mac. 1973. Oil on canvas. Courtesy of Hallmark Art Collection, Hallmark Cards, Inc., Kansas City Missouri.

feathered hat band that matches the trophy’s flourish of feathers, she is akin to the prize she proffers, a spoil of victory, in keeping with equestrian portraiture’s un­ derlying themes of masculine conquest. McLean also creates a visual parity between woman and horse through composition and color. Standing in front of the horse’s haunch, her thigh becomes an extension of his, while her black and white shirt blends into his mottled white blanket. In contrast, Satin Doll depicts a rider seated on her mare, but it too oozes sexuality, the horse’s name suggestively characterizing the woman. Here, McLean relies on imperfect details copied from his own snapshot to suggest the photographic within the painterly: the dark, oddly shaped shadow thrown by the horse, the rider’s grimace, the frizzy, unkempt bits of her hair and her horse’s mane highlighted by the sun, the horse’s half-closed eye, and the wrinkles of her casual shirt and jeans. These details also produce the painting’s erotics, in the way the woman’s t-shirt stretches across her jutting breast. She is the horsey version of the California babe with her revealing tank top and feathered, blonde hair—like Farrah Fawcett in equestrian form. Other paintings that depict horsewomen in formal Western show attire also betray conventions of womanly attractiveness. McLean’s earliest portrayal of a horse­ woman, like his paintings of male equestrians, resorts to a well-known Western type, the lovely white, blonde cowgirl, who, bearing an American flag, sits astride a jet

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 151

Figure 4.18 Richard Thorpe McLean, All American Standard Miss. 1968. Oil on canvas. Collection of di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art.

black horse (All American Standard Miss, 1968; figure 4.18). She completes an es­ sentially iconic Western trio for the artist: cowboy, Indian, and now cowgirl. The painting’s title, however, suggests a pageant contestant rather than a horse show competitor, an interpretation bolstered not only by the presence of the flag and stagelike setting, but by the woman’s flashy black and tan Western costume. McLean’s pair likely derived from a photograph of a rodeo queen or parade rider.69 Rodeo queens also feature as subjects of Wishing Well Bridge (1972; figure 4.19), this time without their mounts and bearing sashes. Miss Rodeo America beams from behind a prize saddle in a sharp, baby-blue Western suit, a sparkling diamond tiara ornamenting her matching cowboy hat.70 Clad in differently colored but equally dashing suits, her court members pose over a hotel courtyard bridge behind her to form a glorious rainbow of rusty orange, bright yellow, navy, chartreuse, violet, sky blue, black, and white that casts its reflection in the water below. All women are white, but there are brunettes, blondes, and a redhead, each with a different hairstyle. But whether worn long and straight, short and bobbed, dramatically curled under, or tied in a pony tail, hair is kempt and tidy beneath its cowboy hat. Attire similarly varies in cut, color, and material, but is identical in components. One woman wears a short, waist-length, orange and white plaid knit zippered jacket, orange trousers, and coordinating or­ ange gloves; another a hip-length, double-breasted jacket and matching pants in slick, shiny chartreuse material and white gloves; and still another a caution sign yellow ensemble. Hats likewise all match suits, but brims differ: some are flat and wide, some have more severe shaping. In casting the cowgirl as a rodeo queen, McLean’s painting

152 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

Figure 4.19 Richard Thorpe McLean, Wishing Well Bridge. 1972. Oil on canvas. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Gift of Sydney and Frances Lewis. Photo: Travis Fullerton. © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

crystallizes the transformation of tough female bronc riders and other early twentieth-century female rodeo athletes, like those discussed in the previous chapter, into pageant contestants. But what stands out in McLean’s painting are the women’s clothing and comportment, with both subtle and not so subtle differences smoothed into a veneer of sameness, reflecting the simultaneous constraint and liberty intrinsic to female equestrian dress, as well as the centrality of dress to a horsewoman’s identity.71 McLean remembered Wishing Well Bridge as one that represents if not horses, horsey-type people, marked by their apparel.72 Throughout English and European art history women often appear in painted and photographic portraits without horses wearing equestrian attire. Those from the early modern period feature mainly aris­ tocratic women as they were the ones that rode, but in the following centuries as equestrian pursuits expanded into the middle class, more and more women desired to be represented as equestriennes, with riding dress expressing a range of often con­ flicting meanings involving societal standing, propriety, modishness, independence, sexuality, decorum, and athleticism—much like the very act of riding did. One ex­ ample is Frederic Leighton’s Portrait of May Sartoris, the teenage daughter of ama­ teur actress and singer Adelaide Sartoris (1860; figure 4.20). Leighton shows May climbing a hill in a fashionable velvet sidesaddle habit, consisting of a pagoda-sleeved black coat, hunter green skirt, and wide-brimmed black hat adorned with an ostrich plume. Amidst the verdant countryside, she is the picture of smart gentility. Her flowing red scarf, an expressive flourish, however, may signal the family’s history in

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 153

Figure 4.20 Frederic Leighton, Portrait of May Sartoris. ca. 1860. Oil on canvas. 59 7/8 × 35 1/2 in. Framed: 71 1/2 × 48 × 5 3/4 in. ACF 1964.03. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.

tragic theatre—she was a descendant of the celebrated Kemble family—with the colors red and black connoting tragedy’s leitmotifs of blood and death.73 An actress in the guise of an equestrienne also made sense as both often operated outside of conventional gender norms, transgressing societal codes of behavior and decorum. Wishing Well Bridge is not a portrait and its pageant context doesn’t map so neatly onto the show ring or performance setting since pageant wear embodies its own sartorial codes. It does, however, express that such a characterization as “horsey” type invites a multiplicity of not so straightforward meanings.

154 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts Besides his parade exhibitors, pageant contestants, and trophy girls, McLean’s oeuvre also features an abundance of women actively involved in show competition—equestrian athletes (human and horse). Equestrian sport is one of the few sports in which men and women compete against one another from the amateur to professional levels in discipline-specific, breed-specific, and all-breed shows.74 And while women have always filled the amateur ranks, McLean’s paintings mark the years when they fully began to break into the high-level professional ranks. Peppy Command’s and Dixie Coast’s compositions are readily connected to the show ring through an award presentation scene, poses related to showmanship or halter classes, the horses’ immaculate grooming, and the women’s colorful, formal show clothing. Equestrian dress, as numerous studies have demonstrated, is heavily circumscribed by tradition, with each discipline developing “its own set of esoteric regulations on appearance.”75 It is a sign of collective identity, of belonging to a specific sporting community.76 Men’s and women’s show apparel consists of essentially the same components: breeches, jackets, hats, and boots for English; shirts, hats, chaps, and boots for Western. But women’s clothing has always grappled with a fundamental question of how to express womanliness in attire comprised of essentially masculine forms for an activity with deep-rooted masculine associations. The trend for women’s colorful show attire in Western disciplines—Peppy Command and Dixie Coast are both Quarter Horses—grew in popularity during the 1970s and early 1980s, in stark contrast to English attire that continues to maintain an emphatic conservatism, with women and men dressed alike in white or buff-colored breeches and black, brown, navy, and grey hunt jackets.77 English show clothing emulates that of the hunt field, where dark colors mask blood and mud and hardy materials withstand brambles and falls, and owes a debt to Victorian-era fashions, when women’s riding habits (for sidesaddle riding) made from sensible cloth in drab, utilitarian colors replaced the emerald green and scarlet confections of prior decades. But if the plain, even severe Victorian habit synthesized masculine cut and color with a feminine skirt and tailored bodice for proper aside riding position,78 contemporary women’s Western show at­ tire similarly developed into a study in contradictions, with masculine components like rough leather chaps and broad-brimmed hats, which once protected legs and face from the elements on the open range, tempered by feminine tailoring, vivid and attention-drawing colors, and embellishments like piping, fringe, feathers, and silver broaches and cufflinks. Men’s Western show apparel remains more muted with neutral-colored chaps and Western-styled shirts, and jeans. Women’s Western show attire may be traced to styles worn by early rodeo and Hollywood cowgirls like Vera McGinnis who sewed flashy outfits to draw spectators’ and judges’ attention or to more contemporary rodeo fashions like those worn by women in Wishing Well Bridge. It borrows as well from men’s ranch and Western wear, developed by apparel makers like Miller’s Stockman, Pendleton Mills, and Rockmount Ranch Wear that are credited especially with modern shirt designs featuring yokes, snaps, and flap, slant, and smile pockets.79 Its differences from the conservative traditions of English riding, which in America is historically associated with the East Coast upper crust, may also result from Western riding’s geographic relationship with the West, a site of imagined freedom and invention.80 Dressed in coordinating red and white checked jacket, white turtleneck, and to­ mato red trousers (Peppy Command), and royal blue vest and pants, and white turtleneck (Dixie Coast), respectively, McLean’s painted equestriennes exude a stylish

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 155 elegance astride and beside their equine partners.81 If equestrian attire in itself, however, accorded its human wearer certain meanings, Alison L. Goodrum empha­ sizes that turnout, or the public presentation of both horse and rider in a show or the hunt field—is “about the fuller effect of the horse and rider ensemble: the perfection of the partnership between animal and human.”82 Competition attire, tack, and appointments—all part of turnout—are dictated by riders, breed organization rules, show management, tradition, and advertising. I have found that magazines adver­ tisements do not necessarily initiate trends, but synthesize and cultivate what is al­ ready happening in the show ring. Women’s show apparel advertisements perpetuate ideals, and offer new products in achieving them, but are based on ongoing practices of competition. Lynda Birke and Keri Brandt describe the prevalence of feminized images of horsewomen in equestrian magazines, like those that McLean sourced for his early paintings. “Riding wear is modeled in magazine advertising by attractive young women, often ones well known for their successes in competition, and almost always white.”83 And despite that while at the barn, women often wear dirty clothes, keep their hair short or in a pony tail, and have weathered calloused hands, in the public equestrian space of show ring, they ascribe to a different set of gender politics, suddenly transforming into emblems of femininity with color-coordinated outfits, make-up, false buns to suggest long hair, and ornate tack. My own photographs from the 1980s show me in what were then very fashionable color-coordinated outfits consisting of form-fitting quilted jackets, scalloped chaps, and even hats dyed to match, which were proudly made by the owner of the horses I was riding, with my hair in a bun and my cheeks heavily rouged (figure 4.21). Markers of femininity assume great “significance within the public and visible domain of the show ring,” in both Western and English disciplines, so much that “judges routinely reward a ste­ reotypically valued feminine corporeality”—thin, tall, and long-legged (which I am very much not!)—“as being the most elegant, the most stylish, even when others in the competition may in fact be better riders.”84 Horse’s and rider’s suitability to one another is also important, expressed in cor­ poreality and aesthetics. Riders should fit their horses, meaning small riders should ride an appropriately sized horse, while larger, stockier body types a stockier horse. Average-sized, slim riders generally look good on all horse types. Nothing is worse to judges than a huge, overweight rider on a small, finely boned or slab-sided horse! Choice of apparel color is also important. In English disciplines, tradition dictated that only blondes wore dark green hunt coats, although now dark green is often worn by women and men of all hair colors. Western riding allows a veritable range of color options for women, but clothing companies now advocate choosing colors influenced by one’s horse’s coat. Hobby Horse Clothing Company’s website provides a useful chart, modeled on the color wheel, classifying horse coats like human hair colors as black, brunette, and redheads.85 Redheads, for example, equate to chestnuts, sorrel, red roan, liver chestnut, and dun coats, all of which look good with soft earth tones. If riding a horse from the brunette group, meaning bays, blacks, grays, and blue roans, one should choose a bright jewel tone. Neutral buckskins, palominos, and grullas can look “great” in most anything. The universal black is always a good choice since it suits all horse coats and if you ride more than one horse, teal and deep green “are flattering for any horse and rider.” The chart also provides examples of close-up images of women and girls modeling Hobby Horse shirts alongside horses; the women vary in age, but are, predictably, all white and blonde.

156 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts

Figure 4.21 Rob Hess, Amigo, Estes Park, CO. ca. 1983. Color photograph.

In addition to horse-rider suitability and color coordination, good turnout also involves the right tack that fits well, contains the right embellishments and cuts ap­ propriate to the discipline, and is of the most au courant brands. Further, the horse must be properly groomed and prepared with the constellation of available items including coat enhancers, whiteners, feed supplements, and grooming tools. Depending on the discipline, manes are pulled short, left long and natural, or braided, whiskers, ears, and fetlock hair is trimmed, hooves are painted with oil and polish. Dixie Coast best exemplifies immaculate turnout, with horse and handler as an ex­ quisite ensemble, even though McLean’s brush likely heightened the sheen of the horse’s coat and adapted sky, water, and woman’s outfit colors into varying shades of the same blue. The woman stands erect in form-fitting clothing that emphasizes her tall, lean figure and accords with Hobby Horse’s diagram, its sapphire blue color enhancing the bay horse. Her hair is tucked tidily underneath her hat. The horse’s coat glistens; its socks are bright white. The halter’s silver is polished to a brilliant shine. The woman’s white turtleneck and hat set off the animal’s white blaze; its white socks and polished black hooves her black-tipped white boots. While a nonhorse person may recognize the painting’s formal cohesion and the semblance be­ tween horse and rider, a show rider understands such aesthetics are, even if here

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 157 manipulated into precision by the artist, normal and critical to women’s success in the show world, equal to and often trumping athletic ability.

Women and Horses on the Periphery McLean’s two-word titles—Foxy Mac, Satin Doll, even Chub’s Powderface— obviously name the horse, but they also wittily describe the humans in his paintings: the foxy girl handing out first prize to the handsome boy, the tanned woman with feathered hair who I imagine putting on a satin baseball jacket after the sun goes down, or the Native American wearing stripes of powdery face paint. Sacramento Glider (1973; figure 4.22) is less clear. Two boys, one holding a model airplane, stand in front of a girl on a horse, a red and white barn in the background. All wear casual clothing—jeans, khakis, a striped, button-down shirt, and t-shirts. I now know that McLean created this painting, featuring his son Ian and his artist friend Ralph Goings’s son Kevin and daughter Cameron and her horse, for the Stuart M. Speiser Collection of Photorealism. Prompted by his dealer Meisel to imagine an airplanethemed painting for Speiser, an art collector and attorney specializing in aviation litigation, McLean came up with the idea to include a kid with a model airplane, and “add a horse in there or something.”86 But without this background information, the painting’s title begs the question: Is it the name of the horse or the setting and model airplane the boy holds? Through such confusion, the image drolly highlights the gendered nature of childhood play, even if Cameron with her pronounced slump and Ian and Kevin with their bored squints seem none too thrilled about modeling. Boys like trains and planes. Girls like horses. Such gendered stereotypes are part and parcel

Figure 4.22 Richard Thorpe McLean, Sacramento Glider. 1973. Oil on canvas. NASM 201702875. National Air and Space Museum. The Stuart M. Speiser Photorealist Collection. Gift of Stuart M. Speiser.

158 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts of children’s playthings like plastic horse figurines and My Little Pony merchandise that stitch the girl-horse bond “into an enduring fantasy … packaged as playtime for little girls.”87 But girlhood horse obsession, often couched as childish, absurd or a sign of sexual sublimation is also fueled by fiction and the media from Enid Bagnold’s 1935 novel National Velvet (and 1944 film adaptation starring Elizabeth Taylor) to Norman Thelwell’s illustrated books of pony club girls’ amusing equestrian escapades—the first published in 1957—to the more recent television series Mad Men, when Arthur, the handsome young man who rides with Betty Draper at the local stables, asks her, somewhat contemptuously, “What is it with girls and their horses?”88 As McLean moves away from appropriated magazine images based on familiar models and towards his own photographs, he increasingly portrays the contemporary equestrian landscape as one of women and horses. His later paintings—those from the late 1970s and beyond—are accordingly surprising and predictable, imbricated in gendered theories of horsemanship and horse mania. They are surprising in their increasing erasure of men, who feature prominently in his early portrayals of the show ring and racetrack scenes and who are represented in the bulk of historical equestrian art. They are predictable once we understand that McLean represented those he likely encountered most in the stables, parking lots, and other areas surrounding the show rings—of course horses, but also women. At shows and riding stables, women and girls are now everywhere, outnumbering men and boys across the United States and Europe. The pattern reverses, however, at the top tiers of competition, where men predominate in English disciplines, like Grand Prix show jumping, and in Western events, like reined cow horse and ranch riding.89 Men also frequently occupy the highest leadership positions in equestrian organizations and are considered the experts in “a very special knowledge culture.”90 Subsequently, Katherine Dashper finds, the dominant discourse of horsemanship no matter the discipline remains a largely masculine one linked to the mythic figures of the cowboy, the old horseman, and the strong male rider overcoming and “taming” the beast.91 US Olympic eventer Jim Wofford upholds this view in his 2014 Practical Horseman article about what separates great from merely good riders. Citing posi­ tion, physical fitness, and mental toughness as distinguishing traits, apparently only men exhibit them since none of his “great rider” examples are women.92 Despite these inequities, Birgitta Plymoth describes a 2010 Swedish initiative to attract more boys to equestrian sport stemming from the increasing perception of riding as a feminized culture, shaped not by the “centre”—the top tier of professional, inter­ national competition populated by men, but by the “periphery”—the recreational or amateur stable or riding school, inhabited by women and girls.93 Plymoth identifies a related shift in visual culture, from depictions of horses and humans (mostly men) as symbols of status, power, and action, to the horse as an object of female adoration—this latter subject exemplified by Janet Biggs’s photograph Celeste in Her Bedroom (1996), where a young girl poses in riding clothes in her bedroom, every inch of its surfaces crowded with show ribbons and Breyer model horses. Yet rather than dismissing behavior like Celeste’s as childish or utterly confounding as Arthur does in Mad Men, photographer-theorist and self-proclaimed horse girl Deborah Bright interprets girlhood horse mania as a powerful form of identity formation where women embrace the horse as a “potent fetish to ward off the real-world constriction of women’s physicality, power and present in a society that still fears and

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 159 94

belittles those.” Indeed Biggs, an avid rider, remembers experiencing her first feelings of freedom and control on the back of a horse.95 McLean’s paintings make no attempt to tackle formations of identity. They are, he has asserted on more than one occasion, simply about appearances. But more lurks below their surfaces. McLean’s paintings often represent a bond between woman and horse through visual parity, as in Satin Doll, where horse and human look alike with the horse’s long mane and frizzy forelock falling over one eye to mirror the woman’s feathered hair and lopsided grimace. In Veronica’s Shanghai Duchess, both woman and horse look toward the viewer, the horse bending its neck and head as if to ask what the woman is looking at. Their relationship however is perplexing. Is this Veronica? Is the mare hers? Is she one of those horse-obsessed girls like Celeste all grown up? Based on customs of horse naming, the woman is likely not Veronica, since, particularly in Western-riding disciplines and breeds such as Quarter Horses, Appaloosas, and Paints, many horses’ official, registered show names use human name possessives. In the barn, the mare may simply be called Duchess. But whether the woman in McLean’s painting is Veronica or not, the artist’s use of titles from around 1990 onwards for not only Veronica’s Shanghai Duchess, but also such other paintings as Lynne’s Brymar Shantytown (1991) and Nicole’s Smokey Doc (1990) that show horses alone, maintains women’s connections to horses as owners, riders, breeders, or trainers.96 It is an implicit means by which McLean represents peripheral equine culture filled with women and horses, and women–horse bonds. More explicit representations relating to Plymoth’s delineation of the periphery are those McLean paintings that feature women and horses outside of the show ring standing and sitting with horses, sometimes holding lead ropes and reins. Yet I admit that because these sites are the in-gate, the stabling area, or parking field where horses are groomed, saddled, and cooled down before and after performing, they may be better described as liminal—in between the riding school or home barn and com­ petition arena. In various oil paintings and watercolors dated between 1991 and 1993, one woman tightens a dappled dark bay horse’s girth in front of a grooming stall; another sits atop bleachers facing a show ring and bends her head towards a chestnut horse who stretches its muzzle to graze her hand; and in a third, a teenage girl holds two horses in a field with a horse van in the background, one animal nearly resting its head on her shoulder (Black Horse with Red Bucket, 1991, oil on canvas; Untitled, 1992, watercolor on paper; and Portrait of Kiva and Friends, 1993, wa­ tercolor on paper).97 Each of these compositions expresses a private, intimate mo­ ment between human and horse through gaze or touch, implying it is these women and girls who groom, own, ride, and love the horses. Perhaps this is why I envision, in images discussed earlier in this chapter that depict tacked up horses waiting patiently at trailers alongside empty chairs, a woman will return to mount or sit next to her horse. It is worth repeating that McLean’s paintings from this period are based on his own photographs. They thus perpetuate an if not feminized culture of equestrianism, a female one, not wholly imagined since they are borne from the artist’s direct ob­ servances of stable and showground culture and activities, although mediated through the creative process. Within McLean’s oeuvre, women–horse relationships nevertheless remain rather ambiguous, dependent on a look, grazing touch, light clasp of a lead rope or rein, or visual semblance between woman and animal. Lacking the intensity of Celeste’s obvious obsession with all things horse in Biggs’s photograph, McLean’s women and

160 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts horse pictures exude instead the Photorealist sensibility of cool detachment. Throughout McLean’s long history of painting horses, he never felt compelled to ride or own them, claiming an overwhelming indifference towards the animals: “I don’t care for them one way or the other. I wouldn’t own one if somebody gave it to me. They’re a lot of work, and I don’t think they’re particularly bright animals.”98 Even the artist Susan Rothenberg (1945–2020), who insisted her horse drawings and paintings were purely formal experiments, wound up living on a New Mexico ranch with her husband, the artist Bruce Nauman, and a gang of Quarter Horses.99 But McLean, though gaining familiarity with horse culture and communities by photo­ graphing animals and horse people in context, remained an outsider looking in. McLean’s enduring disinterest in horses differs radically from Deborah Butterfield (b. 1949), another Californian artist who began depicting the horse—in sculpture—in the early 1970s, during roughly the same period as McLean. Neither a child eques­ trian nor a horse-crazy girl, Butterfield also chose the horse because of its symbolic potential. During the early 1970s, she fashioned mares from plaster, mud, straw, twigs, and paper against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and feminist movements, their associations with (female) procreation and nurturing a way of countering the animal’s historical use an apparatus of (male) subjugation and occupation, war and violence.100 A move to a Montana ranch in 1977 (she now divides her time between there and Hawaii), residencies and trips abroad, and a realization that natural ma­ terials proved difficult to transport and disintegrated rapidly spurred the artist’s ex­ perimentations with steel, aluminum, and scrap metal often sourced from the junk strewn about her property, and later cast bronze.101 Butterfield’s sculptures got bigger, more monumental, more alive, static yet ready to burst with energy and movement, all sinew, muscle, and bones—horses turned inside out like Stubbs’s anatomical drawings transformed into three-dimensional objects (Monekana, 2002; figure 4.23). But most important was her deepening knowledge of horses, developed through learning and competing in dressage, a physically and mentally arduous discipline that involves precise movements and communication between horse and rider. McLean spent forty years painting horses, never desiring to ride or own one. In contrast, Butterfield’s art drove her to both own and ride them, acquiring experiential knowledge that translated directly into her art. She has likened her sculptural process to training a dressage horse, the redistribution of the actual horse’s muscular struc­ ture comparable to a sculpture’s.102 Butterfield is also deeply interested in human–horse communication, influenced by her friend, animal trainer Vicki Hearne (1946–2001) whose successful work transforming once allegedly vicious dogs into suitable pets dogs centered around exploring alternative, empathetic means of com­ municating with animals.103 Butterfield states: I guess that my work with [my] real horses is so much about language and that my art has to do with imagining another form of life. It’s that empathy; I’m trying to get the viewer to project himself or herself into the form of the horse. I want people to actually be able to crawl into that shape and inhabit it, and to perceive in a different way.104 In effect, she attempts to “become” her subjects and reproduce that experience for her viewers. Becoming animal, an oft-discussed and sometimes impenetrable

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 161

Figure 4.23 Deborah Butterfield, Monekana. 2001. Bronze. 96 × 129 1/2 × 63 1/2 in. 2002.3. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Gift of the American Art Forum, Mr. and Mrs. Frank O. Rushing, Shelby and Frederick Gans and museum purchase. © Deborah Butterfield.

process first theorized by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, involves a relin­ quishing or undoing of fixed notions of identity where subjectivity is destabilized and may consequently be reimagined or reconstituted.105 If imagining oneself as a horse may be one form of becoming, riding may be another where the encounter between horse and rider produces a “co-embodiment,” or “fluid intersubjectivity” that “allow us potentially to transcend—even momentarily—our engagement with 106 merely human modes of conduct.” Becoming’s use lies in its ability to rethink and reform trans-species relationships, gender and sexual identities, and construct new models of ethical practices.107 Whether Butterfield’s sculptures enact be­ comings or are created through them is debatable. But there is something about them that simulates an interspecies encounter. Monekana (Hawaiian for Montana) rests one leg and stretches its neck towards someone. A hunk of static metal, it offers something of itself, inviting viewers, as Natalie Corinne Hansen eloquently states, to engage and interact with it through its body’s posture or the extension of its muzzle into space.108 Painted rather than sculpted, McLean’s equine subjects cannot enact in audiences the same kind of tangible experiences that Butterfield’s do. They materialize then deflate and dissolve into colors and shapes on and of the painting’s surface, in an ongoing perceptual process. In so doing, McLean’s paintings recuperate their sources, the photographs that are deeply bound to what they represent: animals (and some­ times people). But it is in those slips, where subjects become more than mere in­ animate objects that transport McLean’s paintings from the Superreal to the Real and back again, acting out aspects of equestrian sport and its attendant representation in

162 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts art. For those involved with horses, and in equestrian sports especially, McLean’s images are neither strange nor fantastical. They emulate the commemorative markers we know both do and do not always reflect experience. They are familiar, comfor­ table, humorous, suggestive, and unsettling in their repetition of equestrianism’s ongoing patterns of acceptance and exclusion. They return me to my own photo­ graphs, to consider them afresh, wishing I had commissioned McLean to paint one.

Notes 1 McLean, quoted in Brian O’Doherty, “Photo-realists: Twelve Interviews,” Art in America 60 (November 1972): 81. 2 McLean and Bechtle met around 1960 and shared a studio in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Richard T. McLean, oral history interview, conducted by Jason Steiber, September 20, 2009, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC [hereby abbreviated as McLean, AAA interview]; and Dan Tooker, “Richard McLean [inter­ view],” Art International 18 (September 1974): 40. 3 O’Doherty, “Photo-realists: Twelve Interviews,” 81. 4 Tooker, “Richard McLean,” 41. 5 McLean, AAA interview. 6 Tooker, “Richard McLean,” 41. 7 For a discussion and reproduction of Bechtle’s watercolor, see Bridget Elizabeth Gilman, “Re-envisioning Everyday Spaces: Photorealism in the San Francisco Bay Area” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2013), 57, 290. 8 O’Doherty, “Photo-realists: Twelve Interviews,” 82. 9 The horse won three consecutive Hollywood Gold Cups between 1965 and 1967. 10 McLean, AAA interview. 11 Ibid. 12 Linda Chase, “The Not-So-Innocent Eye: Photorealism in Context,” in Photorealism at the Millennium, by Louis K. Meisel and Linda Chase (New York: Abrams, 2002), 11–16. 13 H. D. Raymond, “Beyond Freedom, Dignity, and Ridicule,” in Super Realism: A Critical Anthology, ed. Gregory Battcock (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975), 132; Barbara Rose, “Real, Realer, Realist,” New York Magazine 5, no. 5 (January 31, 1972): 50; Robert Hughes, “The Realist as Corn God,” Time January 31, 1972, 50–55, http://search. ebscohost.com.ezproxy3.lhl.uab.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=66955943& site=ehost-live; Alvin Martin, “Modern Realism is Really Real Modernism: Contemporary Realism in Context,” in Real, Really Real, Superreal: Directions in Contemporary American Realism (San Antonio: San Antonio Museum of Art, 1981), 20; Valerie L. Hillings, “Picturing Reality: Photorealism in Europe, 1971–74,” in Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s, ed. Valerie L. Hillings (Berlin: Deutsche Guggenheim, 2009), 149; Uwe M. Schneede, “1972 and the Arrival of the American Photorealists, First Reactions: Vilification and Reflection,” in Photorealism: 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Painting, ed. Otto Letze (Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2013), 38–40; Kunst um 1970—Art around 1970 (Aachen: Neue Galerie der Stadt Aachen, 1972); Hyperrealiste Americains (Paris: Galerie Des 4 Mouvements, 1972); and Serpentine Gallery, Photo-Realism: Paintings, Sculpture and Prints from the Ludwig Collection and Others (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1973). 14 Louis K. Meisel, “Who Is a Photorealist?” in Photorealism: 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Painting, 35. 15 Linda Nochlin, “The Flowering of American Realism,” in Real, Really Real, Superreal: Directions in Contemporary American Realism, 30; Jean-Patrice Marandel, “The Deductive Image, in Super Realism: A Critical Anthology, 44–46; Hillings, “Picturing Reality,” 145–167; and Schneede, “1972 and the Arrival of the American Photorealists,” 38–44.

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 163 16 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990), 34. A hyperrealist sculpture can also operate in such a way. 17 Hughes, “The Realist as Corn God.” 18 Linda Chase, “‘More than Meets the Eye’: Vision and Perception in Photorealistic Painting,” in Hillings, Picturing America, 23. 19 Craig J. Periso, “Styleless Style? What Photorealism Can Tell Us about ‘the Sixties’,” Journal of American Studies 47, no. 3 (August 2013): 748. 20 Linda Nochlin, “Realism Now,” in Super Realism: A Critical Anthology, 122–24. 21 Linda Chase, “Existential vs. Humanist Realism,” in Super Realism: A Critical Anthology, 92. 22 Samantha Baskind, “Everybody Thought I Was a Catholic’: Audrey Flack’s Jewish Identity,” American Art 23, no.1 (Spring 2009): 104–15. 23 David M. Lubin, “Blank Art: Deadpan Realism in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Picturing America, 51–55; and Katherine Hauser, “Photorealist Nostalgia and the American Family,” Prospects 22 (October 1997): 275–76. 24 Gilman, “Re-envisioning Everyday Spaces,” 190, 170–173. 25 McLean, quoted in Tooker, “Richard McLean,” 41. 26 Gregory Battcock, Why Art: Critical Notes on the Aesthetics of the Immediate Past (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977), 98; and McLean, AAA interview. 27 Ibid. 28 McLean, AAA interview. 29 For Peppy Command, see the Berardo Collection, accessed October 11, 2021, https:// www.berardocollection.com/?sid=50004&CID=102&lang=en&artist=240. 30 These include: the Upperville Colt and Horse Show in Virginia (ca. mid 1850s, exact date unknown), a “National Horse Show” held in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1853, and the 1856 St. Louis Fair. Kurth Sprague, The National Horse Show: A Centennial History, 1883–1983 (New York: National Horse Show Foundation, 1985), 5. 31 Clay McShane and Joel A. Tarr, Horse in the City: Living Machines in the 19thCentury (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 89; and Sprague, The National Horse Show, 6–12. 32 “Stock Show History,” Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo, accessed July 14, 2019, https://fwssr.com/history/; and “A Brief History of the National Western Stock Show,” National Western Stock Show, accessed July 14, 2019, https://nationalwestern.com/ about/history/. 33 The American Jockey Club was founded in 1865, the American Trotting Horse Association in 1879, the American Saddle Horse Association in 1891, and the Arabian Horse Club in 1908. 34 For early histories of these associations, see Robert M. Denhardt, The Horse of the Americas (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975), 218–222; Denhardt, Quarter Horses: A Story of Two Centuries (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 143–167; and Don Hedgpeth, They Rode Good Horses: The First Fifty Years of the American Quarter Horse Association (Amarillo, Texas: American Quarter Horse Association, 1990), 1–22. 35 Appaloosa News began as a newsletter in 1946 but grew into a full-fledged magazine in the 1960s. “Appaloosa Journal,” Appaloosa Horse Club, accessed June 12, 2020, https:// www.appaloosa.com/journal.htm. The Quarter Horse Journal originated in 1948. Hedgpeth, The Rode Good Horses, 96. 36 Hannah Wever, “Keeping Track of Horse Show History,” Orange County Review, July 17, 2008, https://www.dailyprogress.com/orangenews/entertainment_life/keeping-track-ofhorse-show-history/article_65bd95f7-d88d-5294-9397-9bf8ccacf840.html; and “Breed History,” American Saddlebred Horse Association, accessed May 29, 2020, https://www. asha.net/aboutus/theamericansaddlebred/breedhistory/. 37 Alexander Mackay-Smith, Race Horses of America, 1832–1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye (Saratoga Springs, NY: National Museum of Racing, 1981), 368, 376.

164 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 38 Denhardt, Quarter Horses, 165; and Betty Lou Phillips, The American Quarter Horse (New York: David McKay Company, 1979), 9–16. 39 St. Mary’s College Museum of Art, “McLean’s comments on Diamond Tinker and Jet Chex.” Facebook, April 10, 2012, https://www.facebook.com/smcmoa/posts/ 410777122284026. 40 For information about Rustler Charger’s career, see Gillian Baxter, “History of Reining Appaloosas,” European Reining Appaloosa Association, accessed September 7, 2014, http://www.appaloosareining.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10& Itemid=2. For Ludwig on Photorealism, see “Interview [with Peter Ludwig by Wolfgang Becker,]” in Kunst um 1970—Art around 1970, n.p. This catalog lists the Ludwig Collection’s 1972 inventory, which includes Rustler Charger. 41 O’Doherty, “Photo-realists: Twelve Interviews,” 82. 42 “Appaloosa History: National Appaloosa Performance Champions, 1948–1976,” Appaloosa Territory, accessed April 23, 2020, http://appaloosaterritory.com/Articles/ nationalchamps.html. 43 McLean, AAA interview. 44 Chase, “‘More than Meets the Eye,’” 23; and Chase, “The Not-So-Innocent Eye,” 21. 45 Bechtle’s Santa Barbara Patio series, five images done in various media (1981–1983), are portraits of McLean, while Santa Barbara Chairs (1983) is a self-portrait. Betchle based both on photographs taken by him and McLean on a join family vacation. Gilman, “Reenvisioning Everyday Spaces,” 54. 46 Ibid., 171–3. 47 McLean, AAA interview. 48 Chase, “The Not-So-Innocent Eye,” 21. 49 Malcom Warner discusses how the Marquess of Rockingham, Stubbs’s patron, planned for another artist to paint in George III astride the horse. “Ecce Equus: Stubbs and the Horse of Feeling,” in Stubbs and the Horse, eds. Malcolm Warner and Robin Blake (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 11–14. On Stubbs’s classicism, see Warner, “Stubbs’s Classicism,” in Stubbs and the Horse, 65–79. More recently, scholars have argued that Stubbs likely intended to represent the horse alone against an empty back­ ground because of similar pictures he painted of groups of mares and stallions, the latter including Whistlejacket, for the same patron. Donna Landry, Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 157. 50 St. Mary’s College Museum of Art, “McLean’s comments on Diamond Tinker and Jet Chex.” 51 Warner, “Ecce Equus,” 15. 52 Stephen F. Eisenman, The Cry of Nature (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 113. 53 Steve Baker writes that animals are “things in and of themselves: not (just) the persuasive illustration of an idea,” in Artist/Animal (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 101. 54 McLean, AAA interview. 55 Ibid. 56 Joshua Shannon, The Recording Machine: Art and Fact during the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017), 119. 57 Kate Linthicum, “Star Horse’s New Finish Line” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2014, http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/09/local/la-me-buried-racehorse-20140309; and “Zero Hancock,” Appaloosa Horse Club, accessed August 26, 2021, https://sub. appaloosa.com/association/hof/ZeroHancock.htm. 58 Nochlin, “The Flowering of American Realism,” 27. 59 Many transformations of the racing industry have occurred in the twenty-first century including the rise and now dominance of Latin American jockeys and the development of international racing and breeding programs by Saudi and Emirate families like Godolphin Racing, founded by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. 60 Some of these are the All Indian Rodeo Cowboys Association, the Federation of Black Cowboys, the Black Professional Cowboys and Cowgirls Association, the Oakland Black Cowboy Association, the Black Heritage Riders, the Real Cowboy Association, the Bill

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 165

61

62

63

64 65 66

67 68 69 70

71

72 73 74

75 76

Pickett Invitational Rodeo, and the Compton Jr. Posse. The Studio Museum’s 2017 ex­ hibition Black Cowboy featured members of these groups. Also see the online journal Black Reins for articles on Black horsepersons in various equine disciplines. Wever, “Keeping Track of Horse Show History,”; and Zann Nelson, “Buried Truth: Black Horsemen in Racing,” Orange County Review, January 9, 2019, https://www. dailyprogress.com/orangenews/opinion/buried-truth-black-horsemen-in-racing/article_ 467ff062-1456-11e9-9a99-dbfd9fa7321a.html. No records, however, indicate that Lewis did come to Virginia to show. Weaver, “Keeping Track of Horse Show History”; and Todd Scott, “An Equestrian Center along the Joe Lewis Greenway?,” Detroit Greenways Coalition, November 22, 2018, https:// detroitgreenways.org/an-equestrian-center-along-the-joe-louis-greenway/. Melvin Cox, “Best of HN [Horse Nation]: No Room for Bigotry in Equestrian Sport,” Eventing Nation, March 3, 2017, https://eventingnation.com/best-of-hn-no-room-forbigotry-in-equestrian-sport/. Cox works to promote diversity and inclusivity in equine sports, recognizing that FEI (International Equestrian Federation) show jumping is in­ ternational, comprised of riders from North and Latin America, Africa, Europe, Australia, and Asia. Diversity in contemporary equestrian sports is further discussed in the epilogue. For a reproduction of Lauralei, 1996, watercolor on paper, see Meisel and Chase, Photorealism at the Millennium, 176. Nochlin, “The Flowering of American Realism,” 26-33. On Spencer’s biography, see “Shakta Bear Step,” Appaloosa Hall of Fame inductees, Appaloosa Horse Club, accessed July 16, 2019, http://www.appaloosa.com/association/ hof/shatkabearstep.htm; and Clifford R. Spencer obituary, Placerville Mountain Democrat, September 19, 1980, 4. On his performances, see R.E. Brumby, “Goodman News,” Holmes County Herald, February 3, 1972, 7. Randy Witte, “History of Western Horseman: 75 Years of the World’s Leading Horse Magazine (Ft. Worth, TX: Western Horseman Magazine, 2011), 32–33, 44–45. For the source photograph for McLean’s painting, see “Appaloosa History: Lord of the Leopards: Frank Scripter,” Appaloosa Territory, accessed October 19, 2021, https:// appaloosaterritory.com/Articles/scripter.html. The parade is perhaps the Rose Bowl parade since a McLean painting from 1967 is titled Pasadena Fancy, likely referencing the Rose Bowl’s host city. This is Christine (Vincent) Williams, Miss Rodeo America 1970, who will present the 1971 saddle and title to Miss Rodeo Idaho, Lana “Brackenbury” Parker, the blonde woman in the dark suit, just behind Williams. “Former Miss Rodeo Americas,” Miss Rodeo America, accessed July 23, 2019, https://www.missrodeoamerica.com/p/ missrodeoamerica/former-mras. Alison Matthews David, “Elegant Amazons: Victorian Riding Habits and the Fashionable Horsewoman,” Victorian Literature and Culture 30, no. 1 (2002): 180; and Alison L. Goodrum, “‘A Severity of Plainness’: the Culture of Female Riding Dress in America During the 1920s and 1930s,” Annals of Leisure Research 15, no. 1 (2012): 100. McLean, AAA interview. Malcolm Warner, Friendship and Loss in the Victorian Portrait: May Sartoris by Frederic Leighton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 3, 15, 33. This wasn’t always the case. In early iterations, horse shows offered ladies-only classes, a tradition some breeds, like Saddlebreds, continue to maintain. And, the Olympics only began allowing women to compete in equestrian events in the second half of the twentieth century: in dressage, in 1952; in show jumping in 1956; and in eventing in 1964. Katherine L. Dashper, “Beyond the Binary: Gender Integration in British Equestrian Sport,” (17–53), in Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, eds. Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik (Dordrecht: Springer, 2013), 41. Goodrum, “‘A Severity of Plainness’,” 100. Katherine Dashper and Michael St. John, “Clothes Make the Rider: Equestrian Competition Dress and Sport,” Annals of Leisure Research 19, no. 2 (2016), https://www. researchgate.net/publication/283760081_Clothes_make_the_rider_Equestrian_competi­ tion_dress_and_sporting_identity.

166 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 77 Exceptions are the scarlet coat worn by Grand Prix riders and members of teams, like the United States Equestrian Team, competing in international competition. Today English riding attire has also loosened some of its restrictions. While equitation riders are still expected to wear dark colored jackets, in show jumping classes, riders may wear brighter colors including royal blue and magenta. Bling—colored sequins on jackets, collars, and hats—is also popular, but disfavored still by many judges. Materials are also changing with heavy wools giving way to lighter, washable, stretch performance fabrics developed through technological advancements, comparable to trends in other sports. Dashper and St. John, “Clothes Make the Rider.” 78 David, “Elegant Amazons,” 182–4. 79 G. Daniel DeWeese, “The Evolution of Western Wear: How the Cowboy Introduced America’s Only Indigenous Fashion Category,” True West, June 28, 2009, https:// truewestmagazine.com/the-evolution-of-western-wear/. 80 Goodrum, “‘A Severity of Plainness’,” 99–100. 81 Peppy Command’s rider is probably Diane Rosenberger. At the 1974 Iowa State Fair Horse Show, the pair won first place in the Youth Western Pleasure class. “Quarter Horse Show Supreme,” Des Moines Register, August 26, 1974, 3. I was unable to find in­ formation about a horse named Dixie Coast. 82 Alison L. Goodrum, “Riding Dress History, with a Twist: The Sidesaddle Habit and the Horse During the Early Twentieth Century,” in Domestic Animals and Leisure, ed. Neil Carr (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 189. 83 Lynda Birke and Keri Brandt, “Mutual Corporeality: Gender and Human/Horse re­ lationships,” Women’s Studies International Forum 32, no. 3 (May 2009): 190. 84 Ibid., 192. 85 Find Your Winning Colors, Hobby Horse Clothing Company, accessed September 30, 2021, https://www.hobbyhorseinc.com/pages/winning-colors. 86 Stuart M. Speiser obituary, Washington Post, October 28, 2010, http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102806812.html; and McLean, AAA transcript. 87 Kari Weil, “Purebreds and Amazons: Saying Things with Horses in Late-NineteenthCentury France,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 11, no. 1 (1999): 32. 88 Mad Men, season 2, episode 3, “The Benefactor,” directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, aired August 10, 2008, on AMC. 89 Kendra Coulter, “Horse Power: Gender, Work, and Wealth in Canadian Show Jumping,” in Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, 165; and Megan Arszman, “Women Professionals: Dirt Arenas, Not Glass Ceilings,” Horse and Rider, May 13, 2019, https://horseandrider.com/western-horse-life/dirt-arenas-not-glass-ceilings-professionalwomen-in-the-horse-inudstry. 90 Birgitta Plymoth, “‘We Have to Make Horse Riding More Masculine!’ On the Difference between Masculine Needs and Feminine Practices in the Context of Swedish Equestrian Sports,” in Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, 150–151. 91 Dashper, “Beyond the Binary, 48. For a discussion of the gendering of horsemanship, especially natural horsemanship, as masculine see Birke and Brandt, “Mutual Corporeality,” 189–197. 92 Jim Wofford, “The Line between Good and Great: Many Are Good; Few Are Great. What’s the Difference?” Practical Horseman 42, no. 9 (September 2014): 29–32. 93 Plymoth, “‘We Have to Make Horse Riding More Masculine!’” 150–51. 94 Deborah Bright, “Horse Crazy,” in Horse Tales: American Images and Icons, 1800–2000 (Katonah, New York: Katonah Museum of Art, 2001), 30. 95 Michael J. Rosen, Horse People: Writers and Artists on the Horses they Love (New York: Artisan, 1998), 19; and Lawrence Scanlan, Wild about Horses: Our Timeless Passion for the Horse (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1998), 312. Bright takes up some of the same themes as Biggs, but in relation to gendered and sexual identities. Her series of photo­ graphs Being and Riding (1996–1999), depicting close-ups of plastic toy horses bound by chains and black leather, blindfolded with strips of white fabric, or placed seductively between rumpled sheets, explodes the normative erotics attendant in girl-horse adoration, often considered a stepping stone to mature, heterosexual adult relationships, into

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 167

96 97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105

106 107 108

alterative, queer possibilities. On Bright, see not only her essay, “Horse Crazy,” but also Natalie Corinne Hansen, “Horse Stories: Rethinking the Human-Animal Divide” (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2009), 98–99; Hansen, “Horse-Crazy Girls: Alternative Embodiments and Socialities,” (97–121) in Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism, eds. Charlie Blake, Claire Molloy, and Steven Shakespeare (London: Continuum, 2012), 103; and Susan McHugh, Animal Stories: Narrating Across Species Lines (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 93. Only one McLean painting that I am aware of uses a male possessive, Mark’s Poker Chip (1976). But even here, the name is countered by the depiction of a female rider, dressed in show gear, astride an Appaloosa. These three paintings are reproduced in Meisel and Chase, Photorealism at the Millennium, 173–75. McLean, AAA transcript. Calvin Tompkins, “Western Disturbances: Bruce Nauman’s Singular Influences,” The New Yorker, May 25, 2009, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/06/01/westerndisturbances. Marcia Tucker, “Interview with Debora Butterfield,” in Horses, by Donald Kuspit and Marcia Tucker (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992), 17–19. Jane Smiley, introduction to Deborah Butterfield, by Robert Gordon (New York: Abrams, 2003), 13–14; and Judy Wagonfeld, “Butterfield’s Horses Exude Her Unbridled Love for the Equine,” Special to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 21, 2005, https://www. seattlepi.com/ae/article/Butterfield-s-horses-exude-her-unbridled-love-for-1178856.php. Tucker, “Interview with Deborah Butterfield,” 49. Ibid., 38. On Hearne’s training practices and theories, see Vicki Hearne, Adam’s Task: Calling Animals By Name (New York: Harper Perrenial, 1994). Butterfield, quoted in Tucker, “Interview with Deborah Butterfield,” 14. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 237–52. The ability to become animal is unique to humans since animals are effectively already in a state of perpetual becoming. Richard Iveson, “Deeply Ecological Deleuze and Guattari: Humanism’s Becoming Animal,” HumAnimalia 4, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 37–41. Birke and Brandt, “Mutual Corporeality,” 196. Ibid.; and Natalie Corinne Hansen, “Rethinking Cross-Species Relations: Feminist Interventions,” Michigan Feminist Studies 23, no. 1 (2010), accessed August 5, 2019, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.ark5583.0023.103. Hansen, “Rethinking Cross-Species Relations.”

Bibliography American Saddlebred Horse Association. “Breed History.” Accessed May 29, 2020. https:// www.asha.net/aboutus/theamericansaddlebred/breedhistory/. Appaloosa Horse Club. “Shakta Bear Step.” Appaloosa Hall of Fame Inductees. Accessed July 16, 2019. http://www.appaloosa.com/association/hof/shatkabearstep.htm Appaloosa Horse Club. “Appaloosa Journal.” Accessed June 12, 2020. https://www. appaloosa.com/journal.htm. Appaloosa Horse Club. “Zero Hancock.” Accessed August 26, 2021. https://sub.appaloosa. com/association/hof/ZeroHancock.htm. Appaloosa Territory. “Appaloosa History: Lord of the Leopards: Frank Scripter.” Accessed October 9, 2021. https://appaloosaterritory.com/Articles/scripter.html. Appaloosa Territory. “Appaloosa History: National Appaloosa Performance Champions, 1948–1976.” Accessed April 23, 2020. http://appaloosaterritory.com/Articles/ nationalchamps.html. Arszman, Megan. “Women Professionals: Dirt Arenas, Not Glass Ceilings.” Horse and Rider, May 13, 2019. https://horseandrider.com/western-horse-life/dirt-arenas-not-glass-ceilingsprofessional-women-in-the-horse-inudstry.

168 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts Baker, Steve. Artist/Animal. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Baskind, Samantha. “Everybody Thought I Was a Catholic’: Audrey Flack’s Jewish Identity,” American Art 23, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 104–115. Battcock, Gregory. Why Art: Critical Notes on the Aesthetics of the Immediate Past. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977. Baxter, Gillian. “History of Reining Appaloosas.” European Reining Appaloosa Association. Accessed September7, 2014. http://www.appaloosareining.eu/index.php?option=com_ content&view=article&id=10&Itemid=2. Birke, Lynda and Keri Brandt. “Mutual Corporeality: Gender and Human/Horse Relationships,” Women’s Studies International Forum 32, no. 3 (May 2009): 189–197. Bright, Deborah. “Horse Crazy.” In Horse Tales: American Images and Icons, 1800–2000. Katonah, NY: Katonah Museum of Art, 2001. 22–31. Brumby, R.E. “Goodman News.” Holmes County Herald, February 3, 1972. Chase, Linda. “Existential vs. Humanist Realism.” In Super Realism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Gregory Battcock. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. 81–95. Chase, Linda. “The Not-So-Innocent Eye: Photorealism in Context.” In Photorealism at the Millennium, by Louis K. Meisel and Linda Chase. New York: Abrams, 2002. 11–22. Chase, Linda. “‘More than Meets the Eye’: Vision and Perception in Photorealistic Painting.” In Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s, edited by Valerie L. Hillings. Berlin: Deutsche Guggenheim, 2009. 23–43. Coulter, Kendra. “Horse Power: Gender, Work, and Wealth in Canadian Show Jumping.” In Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, edited by Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. 165–181. Cox, Melvin. “Best of HN [Horse Nation]: No Room for Bigotry in Equestrian Sport.” Eventing Nation, March 3, 2017. https://eventingnation.com/best-of-hn-no-room-forbigotry-in-equestrian-sport/. Dashper, Katherine L. “Beyond the Binary: Gender Integration in British Equestrian Sport.” In Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, edited by Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. 17–53. Dashper, Katherine and Michael St. John. “Clothes Make the Rider: Equestrian Competition Dress and Sport.” Annals of Leisure Research 19, no. 2 (2016). https://www.researchgate. net/publication/283760081_Clothes_make_the_rider_Equestrian_competition_dress_and_ sporting_identity. David, Alison Matthews. “Elegant Amazons: Victorian Riding Habits and the Fashionable Horsewoman.” Victorian Literature and Culture 30, no. 1 (2002): 179–210. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Denhardt, Robert M. The Horse of the Americas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1975. Denhardt, Robert M. Quarter Horses: A Story of Two Centuries. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991. DeWeese, G. Daniel. “The Evolution of Western Wear: How the Cowboy Introduced America’s Only Indigenous Fashion Category.” True West, June 28, 2009, https:// truewestmagazine.com/the-evolution-of-western-wear/. Eisenman, Stephen F. The Cry of Nature. London: Reaktion Books, 2013. Fort Worth Stock Show and Rodeo. “Stock Show History.” Accessed July 14, 2019. https:// fwssr.com/history/; Gilman, Bridget Elizabeth. “Re-envisioning Everyday Spaces: Photorealism in the San Francisco Bay Area.” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2013. Glatter, Lesli Linka, dir. “The Benefactor.” Mad Men, season 2, episode 3, AMC, 2008. Goodrum, Alison L. “‘A Severity of Plainness’: the Culture of Female Riding Dress in America During the 1920s and 1930s.” Annals of Leisure Research 15, no. 1 (2012): 87–105.

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 169 Goodrum, Alison L. “Riding Dress History, with a Twist: The Sidesaddle Habit and the Horse During the Early Twentieth Century.” In Domestic Animals and Leisure, edited by Neil Carr. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 175–200. Hansen, Natalie Corinne. “Horse Stories: Rethinking the Human-Animal Divide.” PhD diss., University of California, Santa Cruz, 2009. Hansen, Natalie Corinne. “Rethinking Cross-Species Relations: Feminist Interventions.” Michigan Feminist Studies 23, no. 1 (2010). http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.ark5583. 0023.103. Hansen, Natalie Corinne. “Horse-Crazy Girls: Alternative Embodiments and Socialities.” In Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism, edited by Charlie Blake, Claire Molloy, and Steven Shakespeare. London: Continuum, 2012. 97–121. Hauser, Katherine. “Photorealist Nostalgia and the American Family,” Prospects 22 (October 1997): 263-284. Hearne, Vicki. Adam’s Task: Calling Animals By Name. New York: Harper Perrenial, 1994. Hedgpeth, Don. They Rode Good Horses: The First Fifty Years of the American Quarter Horse Association. Amarillo, Texas: American Quarter Horse Association, 1990. Hillings, Valerie L. “Picturing Reality: Photorealism in Europe, 1971–74.” In Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s, edited by Valerie L. Hillings. Berlin: Deutsche Guggenheim, 2009. 145–168. Hughes, Robert. “The Realist as Corn God,” Time, January 31, 1972. http://search.ebscohost. com.ezproxy3.lhl.uab.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=66955943&site=ehostlive; Hyperrealiste Americains. Paris: Galerie Des 4 Mouvements, 1972. “Interview [with Peter Ludwig by Wolfgang Becker].” In Kunst um 1970—Art around 1970. Aachen: Neue Galerie der Stadt Aachen, 1972. n.p. Iveson, Richard. “Deeply Ecological Deleuze and Guattari: Humanism’s Becoming Animal,” HumAnimalia 4, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 34–53. Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990. Kunst um 1970—Art around 1970. Aachen: Neue Galerie der Stadt Aachen, 1972. Landry, Donna. Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. Linthicum, Kate. “Star Horse’s New Finish Line.” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2014. http:// articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/09/local/la-me-buried-racehorse-20140309. Lubin, David M. “Blank Art: Deadpan Realism in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In Picturing America: Photorealism in the 1970s, edited by Valerie L. Hillings. Berlin: Deutsche Guggenheim, 2009. 45–64. Mackay-Smith, Alexander. Race Horses of America, 1832–1872: Portraits and Other Paintings by Edward Troye. Saratoga Springs, NY: National Museum of Racing, 1981. Marandel, Jean-Patrice. “The Deductive Image.” In Super Realism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Gregory Battcock. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. 36–48. Martin, Alvin. “Modern Realism Is Really Real Modernism: Contemporary Realism in Context.” In Real, Really Real, Superreal: Directions in Contemporary American Realism. San Antonio: San Antonio Museum of Art, 1981. 15–22. McHugh, Susan. Animal Stories: Narrating Across Species Lines. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. McLean, Richard T. Oral history interview. Conducted by Jason Steiber, September 20, 2009. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. McShane, Clay and Joel A. Tarr. Horse in the City: Living Machines in the 19thCentury. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Meisel, Louis K. “Who Is a Photorealist?” In Photorealism: 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Painting, edited by Otto Letze. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2013. 30–37.

170 Richard McLean’s Equine Acts Miss Rodeo America. “Former Miss Rodeo Americas.” Accessed July 23, 2019, https://www. missrodeoamerica.com/p/missrodeoamerica/former-mras. National Western Stock Show. “A Brief History of the National Western Stock Show.” Accessed July 14, 2019. https://nationalwestern.com/about/history/. Nelson, Zann. “Buried Truth: Black Horsemen in Racing.” Orange County Review, January 9, 2019. https://www.dailyprogress.com/orangenews/opinion/buried-truth-black-horsemen-inracing/article_467ff062-1456-11e9-9a99-dbfd9fa7321a.html. Nochlin, Linda. “Realism Now.” In Super Realism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Gregory Battcock. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. 111–125. Nochlin, Linda. “The Flowering of American Realism.” In Real, Really Real, Superreal: Directions in Contemporary American Realism. San Antonio: San Antonio Museum of Art, 1981. 25–35. Obituary of Clifford R. Spencer. Placerville Mountain Democrat, September 19, 1980. Obituary of Stuart M. Speiser. Washington Post, October 28, 2010. http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/28/AR2010102806812.html; O’Doherty, Brian. “Photo-realists: Twelve Interviews,” Art in America 60 (November 1972): 73–89. Periso, Craig J. “Styleless Style? What Photorealism Can Tell Us about ‘the Sixties’.” Journal of American Studies 47, no. 3 (August 2013): 743–757. Phillips, Betty Lou. The American Quarter Horse. New York: David McKay Company, 1979. Plymoth, Birgitta. “‘We Have to Make Horse Riding More Masculine!’ On the Difference between Masculine Needs and Feminine Practices in the Context of Swedish Equestrian Sports.” In Gender and Equestrian Sport: Riding Around the World, edited by Miriam Adelman and Jorge Knijnik. Dordrecht: Springer, 2013. 149–164. “Quarter Horse Show Supreme.” Des Moines Register, August 26, 1974. Raymond, H. D. “Beyond Freedom, Dignity, and Ridicule.” In Super Realism: A Critical Anthology, edited by Gregory Battcock. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1975. 126–134. Rose, Barbara. “Real, Realer, Realist.” New York Magazine, January 31, 1972. Rosen, Michael J. Horse People: Writers and Artists on the Horses they Love. New York: Artisan, 1998. Scanlan, Lawrence. Wild about Horses: Our Timeless Passion for the Horse. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1998. Schneede, Uwe M. “1972 and the Arrival of the American Photorealists, First Reactions: Vilification and Reflection.” In Photorealism: 50 Years of Hyperrealistic Painting, edited by Otto Letze. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2013. 38–43. Scott, Todd. “An Equestrian Center along the Joe Lewis Greenway?” Detroit Greenways Coalition, November 22, 2018. https://detroitgreenways.org/an-equestrian-center-alongthe-joe-louis-greenway/. Serpentine Gallery. Photo-Realism: Paintings, Sculpture and Prints from the Ludwig Collection and Others. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1973. Shannon, Joshua. The Recording Machine: Art and Fact during the Cold War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017. Smiley, Jane. Introduction to Deborah Butterfield, by Robert Gordon. New York: Abrams, 2003. 11–19. Sprague, Kurth. The National Horse Show: A Centennial History, 1883–1983. New York: National Horse Show Foundation, 1985. St. Mary’s College Museum of Art. “McLean’s comments on Diamond Tinker and Jet Chex.” Facebook. April 10, 2012. https://www.facebook.com/smcmoa/posts/410777122284026. Tompkins, Calvin. “Western Disturbances: Bruce Nauman’s Singular Influences.” New Yorker, May 25, 2009. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/06/01/ western–disturbances. Tooker, Dan. “Richard McLean [interview],” Art International 18 (September 1974): 40–41.

Richard McLean’s Equine Acts 171 Tucker, Marcia. “Interview with Debora Butterfield.” In Horses, by Donald Kuspit and Marcia Tucker. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992. 13–54. Wagonfeld, Judy. “Butterfield’s Horses Exude Her Unbridled Love for the Equine.” Special to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 21, 2005. https://www.seattlepi.com/ae/article/Butterfields-horses-exude-her-unbridled-love-for-1178856.php. Warner, Malcolm. Friendship and Loss in the Victorian Portrait: May Sartoris by Frederic Leighton. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Warner, Malcolm. “Ecce Equus: Stubbs and the Horse of Feeling.” In Stubbs and the Horse, edited by Malcolm Warner and Robin Blake. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 1–17. Warner, Malcolm. “Stubbs’s Classicism.” In Stubbs and the Horse, edited by Malcolm Warner and Robin Blake. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. 65–79. Weil, Kari. “Purebreds and Amazons: Saying Things with Horses in Late-Nineteenth-Century France.” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 11, no. 1 (1999): 1–37. Wever, Hannah. “Keeping Track of Horse Show History.” Orange County Review, July 17, 2008. https://www.dailyprogress.com/orangenews/entertainment_life/keeping-track-ofhorse-show-history/article_65bd95f7-d88d-5294-9397-9bf8ccacf840.html; Witte, Randy. History of Western Horseman: 75 Years of the World’s Leading Horse Magazine. Ft. Worth, TX: Western Horseman, 2011. Wofford, Jim. “The Line between Good and Great: Many Are Good; Few Are Great. What’s the Difference?” Practical Horseman 42, no. 9 (September 2014): 29–32.

Epilogue

On June 1, 2020, seven days after the murder of George Floyd and during the initial wave of protests that followed, the Chronicle of the Horse, a magazine that has historically covered English riding sports in the United States, including hunterjumper competition, eventing, dressage, and hunting, published an online column written by then seventeen-year-old equestrian Sophie Gochman. Gochman’s point was this: for too long, the “horse world has chosen to ignore the extreme social injustice embedded” in American culture and policy, which is reproduced in an in­ sular equestrian community epitomized by wealth and white privilege and often hostile to BIPOC. The horse world must act to change.1 Gochman’s column garnered much support, although some commenters questioned her right as an extremely privileged and wealthy young white woman to speak. Seven days later, the Chronicle published a response from renowned hunter equitation trainer Missy Clark (another white woman) that generated nearly one hundred comments, mostly angry and di­ rected both at Clark and the Chronicle for giving Clark’s views a public platform.2 In her column, Clark argued that the horse world wasn’t racist or purposeful in its exclusion of BIPOC because (1) it had supported gay riders by establishing an AIDS support fund in 1996, (2) financial restraints, not race or ethnicity, are the main reason many people are underrepresented in the horse world, and (3) the Black man who runs the in-gate at the Winter Equestrian Festival in Florida told Clark that he had never felt discrimination in the horse community. Clark closed her column with a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. One commenter astutely wrote that: I believe you [Clark] when you say you and your peers are not overtly racist. But I also believe you are blind to the ways that equestrian culture presupposes whiteness—from the places where barns are located, to the exorbitant costs of the sport, to even the assumption all female riders can neatly tuck their hair up into their helmets. Another was more succinct: “And THIS is exactly why we still have a problem.” Over the ensuing months, the Chronicle featured a number of responses by equestrians of color in which they shared their experiences.3 Though many felt at home at some barns and shows, they had also endured overt discrimination and more subtle microaggressions, as well as experienced discomfort from not fitting in in a myriad of ways (i.e., body type, skin color, and riding clothes or helmets that don’t fit because they are made for specific bodies and straight hair). Plus, while financial constraints are often significant, money is not the only barrier because systemic

Epilogue

173

racism contributes to financial advantage. The United States Equestrian Federation has since begun sponsoring community conversations on diversity and inclusivity and created a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan that encompasses outreach, grants, member training, and marketing campaigns.4 Other equestrian sport dis­ ciplinary organizations have followed suit. And even Clark’s own North Run farm initiated a partnership with the Philadelphia Urban Riding Academy to develop equestrian opportunities for youth.5 Amplifying such calls and strategies to diversify equestrian sport were the summer’s powerful visuals of Black men and women on horseback at demonstrations over Floyd’s murder. In Oakland, equestrian Brianna Noble rode her striking, seventeenhand Appaloosa gelding Dapper Dan, a sign reading “Black Lives Matter” draped across his flank.6 In Houston and Los Angeles, mounted members of urban riding organizations like the Non-stop Riderz, a trailing riding club, and the Compton Cowboys, a group established to provide a safe haven and combat stereotypes, marched through city streets with fists raised, some wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Floyd’s image.7 One result of such extensive media coverage was to thrust Black equestrianism into the spotlight, emblematized not only by the demonstration riders, but also the wealth of other urban and rural clubs across the country such as New York’s Federation of Black Cowboys, Philadelphia’s Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club and Western Wranglers, Mississippi’s Delta Hill Riders, and New Orleans’s Game Changerz.8 Photographer Kennedi Carter, whose ongoing project Ridin’ Sucka Free (2019) features Black riders in American cities, describes different communities’ unique traditions and motives for riding. In Texas, she says, it’s tied to the state’s history of agriculture and farming; in Philadelphia, people ride for fun, as a form of escape.9 Carter’s own photographs, along with examples by Ron Tarver, Brad Trent, Akasha Rabut, and Rory Doyle, capture these varied facets, including the perpe­ tuation of Western customs in portraits of Black men and women wearing chaps and ten-gallon hats and in shots of rodeo competition, or riding horses as acts of leisure and care in photographs of youths on horseback outside of McDonald’s and in in­ timate close-ups of boy and girl children’s hands petting and grooming horses.10 In expressing the legacy of Black equestrianism, these riders and the images that document them hearken to the Black hostlers and jockeys painted by Edward Troye and, moreover, since most ride in Western saddles, to the history of Black cowboys—one in four cowboys in the nineteenth-century West was of African American descent.11 But in contrast to Troye’s Black male horsemen or the cowboy, a model of manhood, it is the depiction and expression of black horsewomanship, perhaps best epitomized by Brianna Noble riding Dapper Dan amidst the Oakland protest’s crowds and noise, that resonates.12 You can’t, Noble explained, ignore a big, old pretty horse with a Black woman on it.”13 She is right. It is an image that I keep returning to as I wind down this book. Attending a Texas BLM demonstration, Ilanah Taves describes being struck by the presence of the horses and riders, as well as the skills needed to control the animals in such challenging conditions.14 Noble is an accomplished equestrian. She is committed to diversifying equestrianism and from her East Bay training stables also runs a children’s after-school program that in­ corporates riding lessons, horse socialization, and stable management. Noble began riding as a child and aspired to be the first Black Olympic show jumper. Financial constraints, however, altered her plans and she instead began to focus on training young, green, and problem horses. Dapper Dan cost only $500 because he was quite

174 Epilogue difficult to handle. After two years of training Dapper Dan for parades and com­ munity outreach, Noble felt confident he could handle the demonstration environ­ ment.15 At one point, he raised his head up as black smoke hit his face, but Noble petted his neck and said, “‘Dude, you’re fine.’ And he knew he was. As a horse­ woman, that was everything for me.”16 Training (in the form of riding), as I discuss in chapters 3 and 4, is important to developing human-horse partnerships, generating in its best scenarios a form “co-embodiment” of or “fluid intersubjectivity” between human and horse.17 In certain cases, training may deepen a sense of shared cir­ cumstances. The Compton Cowboys regularly find horses at auction (the main source of the slaughter pipeline), who have often suffered abuse and trauma. These “throwaway horses,” according to member Randy Hook, are the best because of their feisty spirits and chips on their shoulders: “they were the underdogs just like we were.”18 And after Floyd’s death, Compton rider Keiara Wade explained that their “horses feel whatever we feel, and they are hurting right now because we are hurting right now, too.”19 It is through this lens of human-animal interconnectivity that Taves and Philip Howell provocatively interpret the iconography of the Black woman on horseback, stressing the intersection of gender and race. Noble’s goal in appearing on horseback was to change the narrative of protest, offering the media a “good, bright, and po­ sitive image,” as opposed to the chaotic and riotous destruction so often ascribed to and represented as BLM activism.20 In so doing, the image of Noble astride her magnificent equine, leading a group of marchers down Oakland’s streets, reframes the trope of the “man on horseback,” where in elite military units or law enforcement (those usually policing protesters), the horse is employed as an instrument of usually white or hegemonic male power, sovereignty, and authority.21 Here Noble reclaims the horse as an emblem of power by those that historically haven’t held it; Dapper Dan, she says, is her “pedestal to make change.”22 Within the context of protest, the animal becomes both partner and ally in the struggle for social and racial justice, transforming understandings of horses from human instruments, extensions, or sidekicks into political actors.23 As I show in this book, women have become more present in equestrian arenas over the last century and some forms of equestrianism more feminized. Yet historical images of Black female equestrians are rare. Take, for example, Ralph Doubleday’s Real Photo Postcard showing Mrs. Sherry, the female rodeo contestant identified as Black, trick riding with four other women at a 1921 Texas rodeo (Cowgirls Headed for the Round-Up. Triangle Ranch; figure 5.1).24 About this image, Elyssa B. Ford has pointed out that despite period prejudices, the women appear comfortable gal­ loping down the track together. Yet Sherry, who appears third from the left, is the only rider amidst the other celebrity cowgirls including Ruth Roach and Fox Hastings about whom nothing is known. This postcard is also one of only two documented images that depict Mrs. Sherry—the other is by Walter S. Bowman of a cowgirl group at the Pendleton Round-Up—in comparison to the hundreds of photographs of white cowgirls and even to the numerous shots of Black male rodeoers like bulldogger Bill Pickett or bronc rider Jesse Stahl. Though records show that Black women in the West did cattle work and developed impressive horsemanship skills, the disparity of Black female rodeoers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries stemmed not only from institutional restrictions on Black riders, but also, Ford states, a “combination of race, gender, and class working together to create additional

Epilogue

175

Figure 5.1 Ralph R. Doubleday, Cowgirls Headed for the Roundup. Triangle Ranch. 1921. Photographic postcard. Ralph R. Doubleday Photographic Postcards, Dickinson Research Center, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum. Doubleday 066.

barriers” to the sport.25 These barriers include more men than women working as cow hands in the West (a largely solitary enterprise often undertaken by unattached men) as well as a disproportionate amount of Black ranch owners in comparison to white and Hispanic owners due in part to impediments to Black landownership. Because women in the West often worked informally alongside their husbands and fathers, the result is that fewer Black women did ranch and cow work as cowgirls or as the wives and daughters of ranchers—the main conduits to rodeo for many of its most prominent female participants.26 It is unknown what avenue Mrs. Sherry took to rodeo competition. That she is identified as “Mrs. Sherry” suggests she competed under a name denoting her marital status, unusual in a sport where women did take their husbands’ names, but in competition generally used both first and last names. Though “Mrs.” may indicate Sherry’s husband was a known rodeo man, I want to think it was instead her con­ scious signaling of respectability within a rodeo culture that often sexualized women and discriminated against non-whites—an act that anticipated and thwarted her audiences’ and fellow athletes’ doubly fraught, racialized and sexualized perceptions of a Black woman on horseback. Rather than regarding this photograph as an ex­ ception to the dearth of historical images of Black female equestrians, it then becomes a representation of Mrs. Sherry and her mount as collaborators in a transformative endeavor—a bridge to Brianna Noble astride Dapper Dan and another woman on a horse who we must literally look up to—portending today’s ongoing reformation of equestrianism that has for too long been an exclusive and insular activity.

176 Epilogue

Notes 1 Sophie Gochman, “Breaking the Silence Surrounding White Privilege in the Horse World,” Chronicle of the Horse, June 1, 2020, https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/breaking-thesilence-surrounding-white-privilege-in-the-horse-world. 2 Missy Clark, “Sometimes You Have to Read between the Lines,” Chronicle of the Horse, June 8, 2020, https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/read-between-the-lines. 3 Lauryn Gray, “Being the Bay in a Field of Grays,” Chronicle of the Horse, June 9, 2020, https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/being-the-bay-in-a-field-of-grays; Tori Repole, “The Spectrum of Discomfort,” Chronicle of the Horse, June 10, 2020, https://www. chronofhorse.com/article/the-spectrum-of-discomfort; Stephanie Kallstrom, “Life as a Black Equestrian,” Chronicle of the Horse, June 12, 2020, https://www.chronofhorse.com/ article/life-as-a-black-equestrian; David Loman, “A Black Horseman’s Perspective on Our Current Climate,” Chronicle of the Horse, June 19, 2020, https://www.chronofhorse.com/ article/a-black-horsemans-perspective-on-our-current-climate; Jessica Barnes, “The Limits of Diversity,” Chronicle of the Horse, June 22, 2020, https://www.chronofhorse.com/ article/the-limits-of-diversity-horsemanship-race-and-inclusion; Raina Paucar, “Why I Left the Show World,” Chronicle of the Horse, July 16, 2020, https://www.chronofhorse.com/ article/why-i-left-the-show-world; and Ketki Hotaling, “Dear (White) Equestrians: An Open Letter from an Indian Rider,” Chronicle of the Horse, March 4, 2021, https://www. chronofhorse.com/article/dear-white-equestrians-an-open-letter-from-an-indian-rider-2. 4 Erin Harty, “4 Takeaways from USEF’s First ‘Community Conversation’ on Diversity,” Chronicle of the Horse, February 26, 2021, https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/4takeaways-from-usefs-first-community-conversation-on-diversity; and “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan,” United States Equestrian Federation, accessed October 17, 2021, https://www.usef.org/about-us/diversity-inclusion/action-plan. 5 Mollie Bailey, “PURA and North Run Partner for ‘Concrete to Show Jumping’ Program,” Chronicle of the Horse, June 23, 2020, https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/pura-andnorth-run-partner-for-concrete-to-show-jumping-program. 6 Erin Gilmore, “Brianna Noble is the Horsewoman We All Need Right Now,” heelsdownmag. com, June 3, 2020, https://heelsdownmag.com/brianna-noble-is-the-horsewoman-we-all-needright-now/?fbclid=IwAR1qioISoAmaDeaSfv6pd49Jz96ScELCigiOVT9Y66hD26e3fTD56q_rUA. 7 Cat Cardenas, “The Best Thing in Texas: A Black Trail-Riding Club Joined a Houston Protest on Horseback,” Texas Monthly, June 8, 2020, https://www.texasmonthly.com/ news-politics/black-trail-riding-club-houston-protest/; and Walter Thompson-Hernández, “Evoking History, Black Cowboys Take to the Streets,” New York Times, June 11, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/us/black-cowboys-protests-compton.html. 8 On these clubs, see “The Long Ride Home: The Black Cowboy Experience in America,” rontarverphotographs.net, accessed October 23, 2021, https://www.rontarverphotographs. net/the-long-ride-home; Abby Ronner, “Giddy Out: Will New York’s Federation of Black Cowboys Be Sent Packing?,” Village Voice, April 20, 2016, https://www.villagevoice.com/ 2016/04/20/giddy-out-will-new-yorks-federation-of-black-cowboys-be-sent-packing/; Janna Dotschkal, “The Modern-Day Urban Cowboys of New Orleans,” Time, April 27, 2017, https://time.com/4725419/southern-riderz/; and Alan Huffman, “The Untold Story of the Wild West’s Black Cowboys,” CNN.com, July 4, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/style/ article/african-american-cowboys-rory-doyle/index.html. 9 Jacqui Palumbo, “The Black Cowboys and Cowgirls of American Cities—In Photos,” CNN.com, January 29, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/style/article/kennedi-carter-blackcowboys-swing/index.html. 10 For examples, see Brad Trent’s “Mama” Kesha Morse from “The Federation of Black Cowboys” series from The Village Voice, 2016 (https://www.artsy.net/artwork/brad-trentmama-kesha-morse-from-the-federation-of-black-cowboys-series-for-the-village-voice); Ron Tarver’s Roping Competition at a Small Rodeo Outside Dallas, 1993 (https://www. swarthmore.edu/news-events/long-road-home); Rory Doyle’s Tyrese Evans, Jeremy Melvin, and Gee McGee dance atop their horses in the McDonald’s parking lot in Cleveland, Mississippi on Aug. 9, 2017 (https://phmuseum.com/grants/shortlisted/21216);

Epilogue

11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

177

and Kennedi Carter’s Boy, Horse IV, 2019, and Y S, 2019 (https://rosegallery.net/artists/ 87-kennedi-carter/series/ridin’-sucka-free). Katie Nodjimbadem, “The Lesser-Known History of African-American Cowboys,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 13, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/. Philip Howell and Ilanah Taves, “Black Protest and the Man on Horseback: Race, Animality, and Equestrian Counter-Conduct,” GeoHumanities 7, no. 2 (2021): 507. Gemma Price, “How One Woman on a Horse at an Oakland Protest Became a Symbol for Revolution,” The Lily, June 11, 2020, https://www.thelily.com/how-one-woman-on-ahorse-at-an-oakland-protest-became-a-symbol-for-revolution/. Howell and Taves, “Black Protest,” 495. Price, “How One Woman”; “Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, “Oakland’s Protest Rider on Why She Took to Horseback for George Floyd,” KQED, June 2, 2020, https://www.kqed.org/ news/11822227/oaklands-protest-rider-on-why-she-took-to-horseback-for-george-floyd; and “Humble,” MulattoMeadows.com, accessed October 27, 2021, https://www. mulattomeadows.com/humble. Gilmore, “Brianna Noble.” Lynda Birke and Keri Brandt, “Mutual Corporeality,” Women’s Studies International Forum 32, no. 3 (May 2009): 196. Walter Thompson-Hernández, “For the Compton Cowboys, Horseback Riding Is a Legacy, and Protection,” New York Times, March 31, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/ 2018/03/31/us/compton-cowboys-horseback-riding-african-americans.html. Thompson-Hernández, “Evoking History.” Rodriguez, “Oakland’s Protest Rider.” Howell and Taves, “Black Protest,” 496–98; and Thompson-Hernández, “Evoking History.” Gilmore, “Brianna Noble.” Howell and Taves, “Black Protest,” 508–09. On Mrs. Sherry’s identification in this photograph, see chapter 3, note 21. Elyssa B. Ford, “Race, Gender, and Cultural Identity in the American Rodeo” (PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2009), 168. Ibid., 190–94.

Bibliography Bailey, Mollie. “PURA and North Run Partner for ‘Concrete to Show Jumping’ Program.” Chronicle of the Horse, June 23, 2020. https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/pura-andnorth-run-partner-for-concrete-to-show-jumping-program. Barnes, Jessica. “The Limits of Diversity.” Chronicle of the Horse, June 22, 2020, https:// www.chronofhorse.com/article/the-limits-of-diversity-horsemanship-race-and-inclusion. Birke, Lynda and Keri Brandt. “Mutual Corporeality.” Women’s Studies International Forum 32, no. 3 (May 2009): 189–197. Cardenas, Cat. “The Best Thing in Texas: A Black Trail-Riding Club Joined a Houston Protest on Horseback.” Texas Monthly, June 8, 2020. https://www.texasmonthly.com/newspolitics/black-trail-riding-club-houston-protest/. Clark, Missy. “Sometimes You Have to Read between the Lines.” Chronicle of the Horse, June 8, 2020. https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/read-between-the-lines. Dotschkal, Janna. “The Modern-Day Urban Cowboys of New Orleans.” Time, April 27, 2017. https://time.com/4725419/southern-riderz/. Ford, Elyssa B. “Race, Gender, and Cultural Identity in the American Rodeo.” PhD diss., Arizona State University, 2009. Gilmore, Erin. “Brianna Noble is the Horsewoman We All Need Right Now.” heelsdownmag.com, June 3, 2020. https://heelsdownmag.com/brianna-noble-is-the-horsewoman-we-all-need-rightnow/?fbclid=IwAR1qioISoAmaDeaSfv6pd49Jz96ScELCigiOVT9Y66hD26e3fTD5-6q_rUA.

178 Epilogue Gochman, Sophie. “Breaking the Silence Surrounding White Privilege in the Horse World.” Chronicle of the Horse, June 1, 2020. https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/breaking-thesilence-surrounding-white-privilege-in-the-horse-world. Gray, Lauryn. “Being the Bay in a Field of Grays.” Chronicle of the Horse, June 9, 2020, https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/being-the-bay-in-a-field-of-grays. Harty, Erin. “4 Takeaways from USEF’s First ‘Community Conversation’ on Diversity.” Chronicle of the Horse, February 26, 2021. https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/4takeaways-from-usefs-first-community-conversation-on-diversity. Hotaling, Ketki. “Dear (White) Equestrians: An Open Letter from an Indian Rider.” Chronicle of the Horse, March 4, 2021. https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/dear-white-equestriansan-open-letter-from-an-indian-rider-2. Howell, Philip and Ilanah Taves. “Black Protest and the Man on Horseback: Race, Animality, and Equestrian Counter-Conduct.” GeoHumanities 7, no. 2 (2021): 494–512. Huffman, Alan. “The Untold Story of the Wild West’s Black Cowboys.” CNN.com, July 4, 2019. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/african-american-cowboys-rory-doyle/index.html. Kallstrom, Stephanie. “Life as a Black Equestrian.” Chronicle of the Horse, June 12, 2020. https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/life-as-a-black-equestrian. Loman, David. “A Black Horseman’s Perspective on Our Current Climate,” Chronicle of the Horse, June 19, 2020. https://www.chronofhorse.com/article/a-black-horsemans-perspectiveon-our-current-climate. MulattoMeadows.com. “Humble.” Accessed October 27, 2021. https://www.mulattomeadows. com/humble. Nodjimbadem, Katie. “The Lesser-Known History of African-American Cowboys.” Smithsonian Magazine, February 13, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ lesser-known-history-african-american-cowboys-180962144/. Palumbo, Jacqui. “The Black Cowboys and Cowgirls of American Cities—In Photos.” CNN.com, January 29, 2021. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/kennedi-carter-black-cowboys-swing/ index.html. Paucar, Raina. “Why I Left the Show World.” Chronicle of the Horse, July 16, 2020. https:// www.chronofhorse.com/article/why-i-left-the-show-world. Price, Gemma. “How One Woman on a Horse at an Oakland Protest Became a Symbol for Revolution.” The Lily, June 11, 2020. https://www.thelily.com/how-one-woman-on-a-horseat-an-oakland-protest-became-a-symbol-for-revolution/. Repole, Tori. “The Spectrum of Discomfort.” Chronicle of the Horse, June 10, 2020. https:// www.chronofhorse.com/article/the-spectrum-of-discomfort. Rodriguez, Joe Fitzgerald. “Oakland’s Protest Rider on Why She Took to Horseback for George Floyd.” KQED, June 2, 2020. https://www.kqed.org/news/11822227/oaklandsprotest-rider-on-why-she-took-to-horseback-for-george-floyd. Ronner, Abby. “Giddy Out: Will New York’s Federation of Black Cowboys Be Sent Packing?” Village Voice, April 20, 2016. https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/04/20/giddy-out-willnew-yorks-federation-of-black-cowboys-be-sent-packing/. Rontarverphotographs.net. “The Long Ride Home: The Black Cowboy Experience in America.” Accessed October 23, 2021, https://www.rontarverphotographs.net/the-longride-home. Thompson-Hernández, Walter. “For the Compton Cowboys, Horseback Riding Is a Legacy, and Protection.” New York Times, March 31, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/ us/compton-cowboys-horseback-riding-african-americans.html. Thompson-Hernández, Walter. “Evoking History, Black Cowboys Take to the Streets.” New York Times, June 11, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/us/black-cowboysprotests-compton.html. United States Equestrian Federation. “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Action Plan.” Accessed October 17, 2021. https://www.usef.org/about-us/diversity-inclusion/action-plan.

Index

Note: Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Adelman, Melvin L. 2, 61 Adelman, Miriam 2 AfriCobra 37, 45n139 Afro-Dog (Bénédicte Boisseron) 11 Aitcheson, Robert (R.A.) 7, 33, 34, 50, 62, 69 Alabama 6, 18, 21, 28, 33 Alabama Slave Codes 26 Albers, Josef 139 Alexander, William 19, 20, 23, 28 Alix 55 All American Standard Miss 151, 151 All in the Family 133 A.M. Collins, Son & Co. 58 American Eclipse painting 36 American equine portrait photography 5 An American Family 133 The American Horsewoman (Elizabeth Platt Karr) 97 American Quarter Horse Association 9, 134 American Roasters and Trotting Horses 68 American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 30, 54 American Stud Book 27, 38n5, 57, 63, 67–68, 78n50 American Thoroughbred 4, 6, 7, 16, 18, 27, 50, 57, 63, 65, 66, 67, 70 American Trotting Register Association 69–70 The American Turf Register and Sporting Magazine 16, 18, 21, 27–28, 42n73 Amigo 156 Anatomy of the Horse 21, 75 animalier 16, 75, 115, 130, 137 Animal Locomotion (Eadweard Muybridge) 96 Animal Studies from Nature 52 animot 13n39 Appaloosa horse 136, 147 Appaloosa Horse Club 9, 134

Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World (David Walker) 31 The Arabian Horse 129 Arneson, Robert 128 Asteroid 33, 34–36, 65, 66, 71 Audubon, John James 57, 72, 75 Baker, Steve 164n53 Bakewell, Robert 66 Baldwin, Tillie 7, 89 Ball, Charles 25, 26 Baskind, Samantha 133 Bates, Thomas 67 Bay, Mia 25, 31 Bechtle, Robert 128, 129, 133, 140, 141, 147 Belmont 34, 50, 63, 64 Belmont Stakes 34 Bentham, Jeremy 30 Bergh, Henry 30 Bertillon, Alphonse 73 Bewick, Thomas 72 Biggs, Janet 158–159 Billie Buck Objects to Bonnie McCarroll Riding, Pendleton, Round-Up 99, 100 Birds of America (John James Audubon) 57, 72, 75 Birke, Lynda 155 Black dogs 26 Black Horse with Red Bucket 159 Black Lives Matter 173 Black Maria 29 Blake, Robin 22 Blancett, Bertha Kapernick 89, 90, 91 Blue Grass Park 18, 33 Boisseron, Bénédicte 11 Bolivia 21 Bolton 64 Bonheur, Rosa 128 Bonner, Mary 110, 111, 111 Bonner, Robert 61

180 Index Bonnie McCarroll Thrown from Silver 99, 100, 101 Bowen, James T. 75 Bowman, Walter S. 8, 84, 86, 87, 90, 91, 93, 99, 100, 101, 174 Braddock, Alan C 53–54 Brandt, Keri 155 Bright, Deborah 158, 166–167n95 Brodhead, Lucas 50, 65, 68–70 Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza 54 Brown, Edward 33–37, 44n117 Brown, Henry Box 30 Brown, William Wells 25 Bruce, Benjamin Gratz 62 Bruce, Sanders Deweese 57, 62–63, 67, 68, 70 Bucking Horse and Cowgirl 109 Buffalo Bill’s 1889 Paris appearances 113 Burr, Martha 108 Butterfield, Deborah 160, 161 Calgary Stampede: in 1912 88; in 1923 107 California College of Arts and Crafts 128 Campbell, John 40n39 “Camp Town Races” 62 Capture of Laura Edgar 108 Carleton, George 16, 20 Carmouche, Kendrick 38 Carter, Kennedi 173 Catlin, George 6 Cato 28, 32, 37 The Cattle Queen of Montana (Charles Wallace) 108 Celeste in Her Bedroom 158 Chase, Linda 133, 142 Chesapeake region 2 Cheyenne Frontier Days 88, 89, 103, 118n33; in 1904 89; in 1924 88 Chronicle of the Horse 172 Chub’s Powderface 147, 147, 157 Civil War 5, 28, 33, 34, 36, 60, 68 The Claims of the Negro, Ethnologically Considered (Frederick Douglass) 30 Clark, Missy 172–173 Clinker 55, 56 Clotel 25 Cochran, Charles B. 110 Cold Morning on the Range 148, 148 Compton Cowboys 173, 174 Copeland, Huey 23 Cormack, Malcolm 5 Cossack Drag 105 Coulter, Kendra 3 Cousin Ann’s Stories for Children 30 Covid-19 pandemic 38 cow 9–11 The Cowgirls (Joyce Gibson Roach) 87

Cowgirls: Women of the American West (Teresa Jordan) 87 Cowgirls at the Triangle Ranch Rodeo 91 Cowgirls Headed for the Roundup 175 Cowgirls of the Rodeo: Pioneer Professional Athletes (Mary Lou Lecompte) 87 Cowgirls Standing Race 86 Cox, Melvin 146 Creswell Craggs 21 Crowell, Colonel John 21 Cuban bloodhounds 25–26 Cunninghame Graham, Robert Bontine (R.B.) 113–114 Curriers & Ives 37, 62 Dallow, Jessica 38n9 Daniels, Ray 38 Dan Patch 59 Danto, Arthur C. 11 Dapper Dan 173–175 Darktown Comics 36 Dashper, Katherine L. 158 Davie, Allen 27 Davis, John 43n112 Dean, Frank E. 106 Deas, Charles 6 Deborah Butterfield 160, 161 De human physiognomia (Giambattista della Porta) 74 Delattre, Henry 5 Della Porta, Giambattista 74 Derby, Kentucky 34, 37–38 Derrida, Jacques 13n39 Devon Horse Show 135 Dexter 61–62 Diebenkorn, Richard 128 Dixie Coast 138, 138, 154, 156 Donald, Diana 21 Doswell, Thomas W. 32 Doubleday, Ralph Russell 84, 92, 100, 174, 175 Douglass, Frederick 23, 25, 30, 31 Draco 65 Draft with Orange Doors 139, 139 Eakins, Susan McDowell 54–55 Eakins, Thomas 6, 53, 56 Edgar, Patrick Nisbett 27 Edward Troye: Painter of Thoroughbred Stories (Genevieve Baird Lacer) 18 Eisenman, Stephen F. 21, 143 Elmo 65 El Rodeo 112, 112, 113, 114, 114, 115 equestrianism 1–5, 9, 98, 104, 146, 159, 162, 173, 174, 175 equestrian sport 2, 3, 4, 73, 128, 134, 145, 146, 154, 158, 161–162, 173

Index Essays on Physiognomy (Johann Caspar Lavater) 74 Ethan Allen 62, 65 Female Bronc Rider 95, 95, 104 Fernley, John, Sr. 21 Finseth, Ian 24 Fisher, Alvan 5, 34 Fletcher, George 86 Flora Temple 62, 63, 65 Floyd, George 172–173 Ford, Elyssa B. 174 Foxy Mac 149, 150, 157 Franklin, Benjamin 27 General History of Quadrupeds (Thomas Bewick) 72 General Stud Book 68 George Keppel, Third Earle of Albemarle, and Henry Fox Shooting Over Pointers at Goodwood, with Four Servants in Attendance 22 George Wilkes 64, 73 Gibson, Marie 101 Gilman, Bridget Elizabeth 133 Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, with a Trainer, a Stable-Lad, and a Jockey 35 Girls Rodeo Association 102 Gochman, Sophie 172 Goings, Ralph 157 Goldsby, Thornton Boykin 33 Goldsmith, Oliver 30 Goldsmith Maid 62, 64 Goodrum, Alison L. 155 Graflex portrait camera 96 Grand Army Plaza (Brooklyn, NY) 54 Grand Prix 145, 158, 166n77 Grass Hills farm 56 Gray, Bonnie 102 Greenbergian criticism 132 Greene, Ann Norton 26 Grey Eagle 28, 32 Guest, Kristen 79n63 Hambletonian 22, 50, 52, 62, 64, 68 Hampton, Wade II 28 Haraway, Donna 13n36 Harbut, Greg 37 harness racing 2, 60, 61, 69 Harper’s Magazine 31 Hartley, Otho 7 Hauser, Katherine 133 Hearne, Vicki 105, 107, 160 Henderson, Prairie Rose 87, 101 Herbert, Henry W. 29, 61 Hertfordshire Morning (Capriccio for Tessa) 144, 144, 145

181

Hervey, John 68 Hess, Rob 156 Hobbling rules 95 Hobby Horse Clothing Company 155, 156 Homer, Winslow 6 Honest Allen 65 horsemanship 4, 89, 158 Horse of America (John H. Wallace) 67, 68 horse physiognomy 74 horseracing 2, 6 horse show 1–3, 5, 8–9, 55, 128, 130, 134–137, 146, 147 Hotaling, Edward 23, 42n72 Howell, Philip 174 human–animal relationships 18, 85, 128 Idaho Falls Rodeo 101 Idol 64 Indigenous horse 5, 7, 13n27 The Innocent Eye Test 10, 10 Instantaneous Photographs of Animals, A Specialty 52 Jack Magill’s Bourbon Jet 130, 131 Jacobs, Harriet 25 Jameson, Fredric 132 Jarrell, Wadsworth 37, 37 Jay Gould 64, 68, 72 Jefferson, Thomas 26, 27, 75 John, Alexander (A.J.) 7, 34, 50, 63 Johnson, William Ransom 20, 27, 28, 31 Jordan, Teresa 87 Kahlua Lark 139, 140, 140 Karr, Elizabeth Platt 97, 98 Kentucky 18, 19, 28, 32, 33–34, 37, 56–57 Kentucky Stock Book 55, 56, 57 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 172 Knijnik, Jorge 2 Knox, Robert 25 Lacer, Genevieve Baird 17, 18 Lady Suffolk 60 Laegreid, Renée M. 87 The Lancer 99 Landry, Donna 65 Landseer, Edwin 21 Langenheim, Frederick 52 Lauralei 146 Lavater, Johann Caspar 74 Lawrence, Elizabeth Atwood 86, 101, 107 LeBrun, Charles 25 Lecompte, Mary Lou 87, 88, 101 Leighton, Frederic 152, 153 Les Cowboys 111–112, 111 Lewis, Harry 19 Lexington 50, 51, 59, 61

182 Index Lexington Winter 129, 146 The Liberator 23 Longfellow 58, 60 Los Angeles Times 99 Lord Byron 104 Lubin, David M. 133 Ludwig, Peter 137 Lynne’s Brymar Shantytown 159

Mounting a Bronk from the Chute 114, 114 Mulhall, Lucille 85 multispecies plantation landscape 23–26 Mulvey, Laura 102 Murphy, Isaac 37 Mustang 7 Muybridge, Eadweard 72, 96–99, 97 My Little Pony merchandise 158

Mabel Strickland Sitting on Bench in Studio Pose 92 Mable [sic] Strickland Trick Riding 103 Mackay Marie 137 Mackay-Smith, Alexander 7, 18, 19, 23, 29, 32, 43n112, 43n115, 63, 137 Mackey Marie 130, 131, 134, 137, 145 Madison Square Garden Rodeo 103 Mad Men 158 Mallory, Mary Jane 32 Marra, Kim 98 masculinity 4 Mattfeld, Monica 4, 79n63 Mazeppa 104 McCarroll, Bonnie 89–90, 99, 100–101, 110, 114–115 McClellan, George 36 McDaniels, Pellom III 18 McGinnis, Vera 84–85, 89, 90, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 115, 117n21 McLean, Richard 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133–134, 135, 136, 137–152, 138, 139, 140, 142, 144, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154–162, 157; first horse painting 1; later paintings 1; photorealist paintings of 5, 6, 8, 9 McLean’s equine acts 128; highbrow/ middlebrow 145–148; horse show and its audiences 134–137; McLean choosing the horse 128–130; painting, horses acting as 132–134; still (live) animals 137–145; (white) women and horses 149–157; women and horses on periphery 157–162 Medley 16 Medley and Groom 16, 17, 19, 20, 24 Meisel, Louis K. 131, 132, 136, 157 Mellon, Paul 5 Mellon Collection 6 Messenger 64–65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 76, 79n57 Mileaf, Janine A. 97 Miss Rodeo America 151 Monekana 161 Mooney, Katherine C. 18, 42n74 Morgan, Philip D. 24 Morgan horse 64–65, 68 The Mother Elephant “Hebe” and her Baby “Americus” 53

Nash, Richard 79n62 National Association of Trotting Breeders 64, 69 National Horse Show 135 National Livestock Exchange 134 National Museum of Racing 28 National Reined Cow Horse Association 9 National Trotting Association 64 National Velvet 158 Native Diver 129 Nauman, Bruce 160 Negro-Mania: Being an Examination of the Falsely Assumed Equality of the Various Races of Man (John Campbell) 25 Negro Portraits 23 Nez Perce War of 1877 147 Nicole’s Smokey Doc 159 Nochlin, Linda 133, 146 Northrup, Solomon 25 Notes on the State of Virginia (Thomas Jefferson) 27 Oliveira, Nathan 128 Olmsted, Frederick Law 40n50 Orange [County, Virginia] Colored Horse Show and Racing Association 146 A Painter in His Studio (Richard McLean) 129 Parry, Tyler D. 25 Parson Dick 28 Patton, Paul 107 Peale, Charles Willson 75 Peale, Raphaelle 140, 141 Pendleton Round-Up 101, 102, 174; in 1910 90; in 1912 8; in 1914 84; in 1922 99, 100 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 16 Peppy Command 134, 135, 154 Philadelphia Photographer 53, 57 Philadelphia Urban Riding Academy 173 Phoenix Hotel (Lexington, Kentucky) 62 Photorealism 128, 132 Pictorial Effect in Photography (Henry Peach Robinson) 58 Planet 32 Plymoth, Birgitta 158, 159 Porter, Alexander 28, 32 Porter, Annie 32

Index Porter, William T. 38n3 Portrait of a Dog 52, 53 Portrait of May Sartoris 152, 153 Portraits of Noted Horses of America (Schreiber & Sons) 6–7, 50–51, 54, 57–58, 60, 62, 64, 68, 70, 72, 75 Potter, Paulus 9, 10 Prichard, Greg 76n6 Princess Red Bird on “Blue Blazes” 93 Probyn, Elspeth 98 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association 84–85, 86 Quarter Horse 136, 137, 154, 160 Quarter Horse Journal 129 Race Horses of America, 1832–1872 (Alexander Mackay-Smith) 18 Race Horses of America (Edward Troye) 55, 57, 63, 75 Races of Men (Robert Knox) 25 Racial landscapes 24 Raymond, H. D. 162 Real Photo Postcard 5, 7, 8, 84, 86, 87, 90, 91, 94, 101, 115 Remington, Frederic 136, 148, 148 Richard Singleton with “Viley’s Harry, Charles and Lew” 19, 20, 23 Richardson, James Burchell 19 A Ride for Liberty—the Fugitive Slaves 28 Riding High on Easy Money 93, 94 Riding Pretty: Rodeo Royalty in the American West (Renée M. Lagreid) 87 Ridin’ Sucka Free 173 Rittenhouse, David 27 Roach, Joyce Gibson 87 Roberts, Jennifer L. 75, 80n94 Robinson, Henry Peach 58 Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and Tame (Elizabeth Atwood Lawrence) 86 rodeo cowgirls 84, 87–90, 101–115 Rodeo Road: My Life as a Pioneer Cowgirl 85 Rosalind 64 Rose Smith on Jiggs 96 Rothenberg, Susan 160 Rothko, Mark 139 Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals 113 Rubens 28 Ruskin, John 10 Russell, Charles Marion 108, 109 Russell, Nancy Cooper 108 Rustler Charger 130, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137–138, 149

183

Sacramento Glider 157, 157 Salt Lake City 89, 117n21 San Antonio Express 110 Sanders, Lewis 56 Sanderson, Linda Rose 8 Sartoris, Adelaide 152 Sartorius, John Nost 21 Satin Doll 135, 136, 150, 157, 159 Savage, Kirk 24 Schreiber, Gerhard 51–52, 72, 77n21 Schreiber, Franz George (George Francis) 51 Schreiber & Sons 7, 50–76, 51, 52, 53, 55, 58, 59, 60, 63, 66, 73, 76n10 Schuylkill River 54 Scientific American 53, 72 Seattle Slew 133, 144 Second Maroon War 25 Sedgwick, Eve 98 Sentinel 64 Serpa, Louise 7 Shannon, Joshua 145 Shapiro, Louis K. 146 Simpson, Charles 110, 112, 112, 113, 114–115, 114 Singleton, Richard 27–29 Sir Bertrand with a Groom 19 slave hound 26 Slave Medallion (1787–1788) 35 Slotkin, Richard 107 Smith, Erwin E. 94, 95, 95 Spanish Barb 7 Spencer, Richard (“Shatka Bear Step”) 147 Spirit of the Times: A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage 16, 42n73, 62 sport of kings 18, 61 Spring Hill Academy (Mobile, AL) 16 The Stable Tent, Showing Sea Chests and Saddlery 112, 112 Stahl, Jesse 86, 174 Standardbred horse 7, 64, 66, 67 Stein, Melissa 31 Stewart, Charles 16, 20, 24, 27, 28, 31–32 Still Life with Apples, Sherry, and Tea Cake 140, 141 Still Life with Black Jockey 147 Still Life with Jockey 140 Strickland, Mabel 90 Stroyer, Jacob 29 Stryker, John Addison 84, 93, 94 Stubbs, George 21, 75, 142, 143 Swigert, Daniel 33 Synbad’s Mt. Rainer 148, 149 Tansey, Mark 10, 10 Taves, Ilanah 174

184 Index Taylor, Breonna 38 “Tex” Austin’s International Rodeo 107, 110–112 Thomas Campbell & Co. 56 Thompson, Krista 23 Thom Three Persons 86 Thoroughbred horse 3–4, 7, 16, 26–29, 33, 67–68 Thunder 135, 135 Tobacconist 16, 17, 19, 23, 24 “Tom” walking, saddled; female rider nude, Plate 583, from Animal Locomotion 96, 97 Trick and Fancy Riding (Frank E. Dean) 106 Trifle 19, 20, 24, 29, 32 trotter 34, 50–51, 60–62, 64–70, 73–76 Troye, Edward 5, 6, 9, 16, 50 Troye’s racehorse portraits 16; Thoroughbred breeding 26–29; Troye and English models 18–23; Troye’s last multifigure painting 32–37 Turf, Field and Farm 57, 62, 63 Twelve Horses 139 23rd National Appaloosa Horse Show 135 Uncle Tom’s Cabin 26, 30 The Undefeated Asteroid 71 United States Equestrian Federation 9, 173 Upperville Colt and Horse Show 135 vaquero 7 Vaught, Jeannette 89 Vera McGinnis Trick Riding 85 Veronica’s Shanghai Duchess 1, 2, 145, 159 Vietnam War 160 Viley, Warren 34 Viley, Willa 19, 28–29

Wagner 32 Walker, David 31 Wallace, Charles 108 Wallace, John H. 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 78n54 Wallace’s American Stud Book 68 Wallace’s American Trotting Register 64–65, 67–68, 70 Wallace’s Monthly 64, 70 Wallace’s Yearbook 70 Warner, Malcolm 164n49 Washington, George 26, 27 Waterhouse, Ellis Kirkham 5 Waverly 64 Weil, Kari 4, 11, 104 Western Tableau with Italian Chairs 140 West Wind 64 Whistlejacket (Richard McLean) 141, 142, 142, 143–144 Whistlejacket (George Stubbs) 142–143, 143 Whistler, James Abbott McNeill 144 Wild West show 85, 88–89, 92, 95, 104, 110, 113 Wilkes, George 72 Williamson, Ansel 33 Willis, Alfred E. 74 Winter Equestrian Festival 172 Wishing Well Bridge 151, 152, 152, 153 Wofford, Jim 158 women and horses 101–108, 149–162 Woodburn Farm 7, 33–36, 50, 55, 59, 62–65, 67–70 Woodford Mambrino 50, 63 Yingling, Charlton W. 25 The Young Bull 9 Zero Hancock 146

Wade, Keiara 174