Woman Driver
ca 1886
Frederic Earl Christy was a prolific American Artist born in Philadelphia, who attended the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts from 1905 - 1907. He focused on Ivy League college life and specialized in portraying beautiful young women playing sports (such as basketball, golf and tennis), dressed in fashionable outfits. Christy produced dozens of magazine covers for: Dell Publishing Company for Modern Romances, Sunday Magazine of the New York Times, Liberty Magazine and Puck Magazine. He also created illustrations for many calendar prints, postcards and Princess Pat Cosmetic’s advertisements. Here we see a fashionable young lady dressed in blue, out for a drive in an early automobile with a tiller. The movement of the automobile is nicely echoed in the movement of the scarf attached to the lady’s hat and her warm fur collar suggests that travelling at such speeds was a rather cold affair.
