Medium: oil
Exhibited: Royal Academy, 1885
Athenaeum, 11 April 1885:
Mr. Eyre Crowe has finished, and will probably send to the Royal Academy … ‘A Wedding Tour in Normandy’; a young English couple riding a tandem tricycle in the High Street of an old and picturesque town, much to the admiration and edification of the observers.
The Scotsman, 12 May 1885:
In his quaintly humorous way, Eyre Crowe has hit off the notion of a newly-wedded pair doing their honeymoon on a bicycle. The sensation excited as the equipage passes through a quiet Norman town is indicated in happily imagined look and gesture, not the least telling point being the obvious effort of the travellers to look as nonchalant as possible under the general gaze. The workmanship shows accustomed solidity, with the painter’s no less characteristic hardness and dryness of manner.
The Leeds Mercury, 19 May 1885:
The other pictures in this room to which we would draw attentions are … Mr. Eyre Crowe’s extraordinary production called “A Honeymoon in Normandy,” a couple on a tricycle, which would probably strengthen the belief among the inhabitants of Lisieux that all English people are eccentric;
The Times, 22 May 1885:
… Mr. Eyre Crowe’s dreadful ‘Honeymoon in Normandy’ (780) – this, too, is on the line.
Birmingham Daily Post, 26 May 1885
As to Mr. Eyre Crowe’s tricycling horror, “Honeymoon in Normandy” (780), it illustrates one of the disadvantages of being an A.R.A. Had he been an outsider it would certainly have been rejected, and then he could have burnt it and saved his reputation from a serious maim.
Illustrated London News, 30 May 1885:
Of all the pictures in the room … Mr Armitage’s ‘After the Arena’ (792) is – putting aside Mr. Eyre Crowe’s ‘Honeymoon’ (780) – almost, if not quite, the worst.
Athenaeum, 13 June 1885:
… a young British couple on a tricycle in a street at Lisieux. Mr. Crowe should break his lamps.
‘The Academy and the Salon’, Walter Armstrong, The National Review, 28 June 1885:
On the present occasion, seven pictures by Mr J.R. Herbert, three by Mr. Eyre Crowe, three by Mr. Frith, three by Mr. Oakes, six by Mr. Cooker, three by Mr. Storey, three by Mr. Armitage, four by Mr. Goodall, and one by Mr. Hodgson, or thirty-three in all, occupy places on the line; and, of the whole thirty-three, hardly one would have the slightest chance of admission to any show where merit was the test. A few of them, such as Mr. Herbert’s seven, Mr. Eyre Crowe’s three, Mr. Storey’s three, and a monstrous thing by Mr. Armitage, are such fatuous absurdities that, were it not for the harm they do to the general cause of art, one would pass them by with a shrug of the shoulders and a thought of pity for the men who had seriously to find them places…
The work was lampooned by Punch writer Harry Furniss in an exhibition in 1887, with the plates and captions subsequently published as ‘Harry Furniss’s Royal Academy’.
The Era, 7 May 1887
There is now to be seen at 25, Old Bond-street, a collection of the most trenchant criticisms that have ever been passed upon the weaker side of the representative artists of to-day. For of all forms of criticism, well-directed burlesque has always been the most effective, and that is the end and substance of the black and white sketches which Mr. Harry Furniss, kindliest and keenest of caricaturists, has gathered together in what he is please to call his “Royal Academy.”… “That Eyre Crowe” is a happy hit at the artist’s recent curiosities in the portrayal of Norman peasants and English tourists …
Eyre Crowe (1824-1910) 