Hop on a Bike
Before the Tour de France, the most popular bicycle competitions were indoor track races where riders would race against their competitors as well as the clock. These races were renowned for their twenty-four hour periods, in which cyclists would test the limits of their endurance and fight sheer exhaustion. This process lasted for six days, which made these races an absolute test of mental and physical endurance. Cyclists would accumulate approximately 3,000 miles during the course of the race, which is a greater distance than the Tour de France’s 2,200 miles.
The Six Days of New York was one of the major six-day cycling events. It was held at (the former) Madison Square Garden's velodrome. These races took place between 1899 and 1961. Among the spectators was Edward Hopper, one of America's most renowned artists. Watching the bicycle races was the inspiration for his 1937 painting, French Six-Day Bicycle Rider. A French cyclist, named Alfred Letourneur, was one of the racers that captivated Hopper’s attention. Letourneur was a world record holding cyclist, who won twenty Six-Day racing events. It’s been surmised that he’s the figure represented in French Six-Day Bicycle Rider.
The painting depicts the cyclist getting a moment of respite from the marathon bike race. He sits on the edge of a bed inside a sleeping cabin, gazing outward towards the racetrack. The cyclist’s pensive look and static pose is an unmistakable trait of Hopper’s realistic painting style. Rather than presenting us with an action shot, which we’d expect from a scene depicting a bike race, Hopper captures the humanity of the subject, by showcasing his vulnerability.
In his youth, Hopper developed an aptitude for drawing and riding his bicycle. Growing up at the end of the nineteenth century in Nyack, a village roughly thirty-four miles from New York City. Each activity provided him with an outlet to break away from small town life. Both drawing and cycling enabled Hopper to observe the world around him in profound ways. Cycling in and of itself is a form of drawing, which I discuss in the post “Fancy Footwork.”
Although there’s somewhat of a stereotype of art and sports being at odds (i.e. “The artist vs. the jock”), it’s far from the truth. Hopper was both. He stood six feet tall at eleven years old, and his lean and athletic physique earned him the nickname “the grasshopper.”
On July 22, 2023, the Whitney Museum of American Art (which holds the largest collection of Hopper’s work) in New York City collaborated with the Edward Hopper House Museum and Study Center (located within his childhood home in Nyack) to organize a sixty-mile round trip bike ride from Manhattan to Nyack, on what would have been Edward Hopper’s 141st birthday. In Nyack, riders traced some of the routes Hopper took while riding his Crescent #9 bicycle, a model built in 1897, which was preserved and is on display at the Hopper House.
Being that today is the occasion of Hopper’s 142nd birthday, why not hop on a bike and go for a spin, and then maybe make a drawing or two?
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I love the "old timey" endurance events; no energy bars, no fit bits, no chase cars, etc. Some of the boxing events were 50 rounds?! Athletes smoked?! Were these people much tougher than us?
Great article.