Virtually forgotten as an artist until this painting was included in a major exhibition of American art in 1950 at the Corcoran Gallery (Washington, D.C.) and the Whitney Museum (N.Y.), Edwin Romanzo Elmer was a man of many talents whose paintings are now considered to be some of the most interesting among those of regional artists of the mid-nineteenth century. In addition to painting, he also produced crayon portaits—handcolored enlarged photographs which functioned as cheaper substitutes for oil paintings—and was an inventor of such things as a mechanical butter churn, a machine that shingled houses, and the whipsnap machine pictured in this painting.

Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, northwest of Northampton, Elmer moved to Cleveland at the age of 17, where he lived and worked for several years with his brothers Samuel and Ansel in a silk thread business. In 1875 he returned to Buckland, Massachusetts, and in the following year he and Samuel built a house which still stands today and is depicted in Elmer’s painting Mourning Picture (also in the museum’s collection). Three years later Edwin married Mary Jane Ware, a young woman from the Baptist Corner of Ashfield, and the stepdaughter of his cousin John. After their only child died in 1890 Mary was heartbroken and depressed and could not bear to stay in the house in Buckland. The Elmers left the house, although they continued to live in and around the hilltowns of Shelburne Falls, Buckland, and Ashfield.

Elmer was almost entirely self-taught except for a short period in the winter of 1899-1900 during which he studied with Walter Satterlee at the National Academy of Design in New York. (He also may have had lessons with James Wells Champney, a successful artist from Deerfield who was a longtime art instructor at Smith College.) He was well-known as a painter in the hilltowns and won prizes at several local fairs. From 1904 through 1907, he had annual solo shows at local establishments in Shelburne Falls, including two at Clarence Ward’s Ice Cream Parlor. Elmer did not sell many original paintings, although he was locally sought after as a crayon portraitist. For most of his remaining years, Elmer listed himself in the town records as a farmer. In 1923, suffering with incurable cancer, Elmer took his own life. Mary Elmer died four years later.

The Painting

The painting depicts Mary Elmer, still wearing the black of mourning, working at the whipsnap machine invented by her husband. This mechanical device was operated by the handcrank Mary is turning with her right hand. Its function was to braid silk and cotton for use as ornamental tassels (whipsnaps) at the ends of buggy whips. The Westfield (Massachusetts) Whip Company was a major manufacturer of whips and rented or loaned these machines to women for use in their homes. This piecework enabled women to generate income at home during their spare time. It was noted in family memoirs that Mary maintained her own personal bank account for the money she earned from her whipsnap work and from her "household economies."

Nearly the entire canvas is taken up with the image of Mary and the machine. The composition is presented at a downward angle, emphasizing Mary’s face and hands and the mechanism of the machine. Light from the window, as well as possibly from a lamp within the whipsnap machine, further centers the viewer’s attention on Mary and her activity and creates an aura around her head as it falls on her hair. The bright white apron contrasts with the muted dark greens, pinks and beiges elsewhere in the composition, further emphasizing the glow of the center scene. The crisp, sharply delineated and almost "hyperreal" detail found in other Elmer paintings such as Mourning Picture is softened here by his expressive handling of light. The light is flattering, conveying a sense of Elmer’s feelings towards his wife, their home, and the machine he invented.

The painting is in part a document of the artist’s view of cottage industry in rural New England in the 1890s. Women had often done paid "piecework" at home (usually sewing, knitting, weaving or other handcrafts), long before this era, and many women had worked with machines in paper mills, textile mills, and woodworking mills in the previous decades. The change depicted in this painting was the introduction of a machine into the home for making this particular product. Elmer portrays his wife’s activity as a respectable one, showing her in a positive light as an attractive, dignified woman working in the peaceful setting of their home.