Hobby Horse Caricature. Verso: Sketch 

Editor: This is Henry Heath's "Hobby Horse Caricature" from the Tate Collections. It's a chaotic scene rendered in pencil, full of people on these early bicycles. What's your take on the social commentary here? Curator: Heath’s caricature brilliantly critiques the "hobby horse" craze, reflecting anxieties around shifting social mobility and gender roles in 19th-century England. These machines, symbols of progress, are depicted as instruments of potential chaos and disruption. Do you see how the artist captures the absurdity of the upper classes embracing this new, somewhat perilous, form of leisure? Editor: I do, now that you mention it! It's less about the machine itself, and more about who's riding it. I had not thought about that. Thanks!