Children
American Impressionism and Realism: Virtual tour
Childe Hassam 1859–1935 | Avenue of the Allies, Great Britain, 1918 1918 | Oil on canvas | 91.4 x 72.1cm (36 x 28?in.) | Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot(1876–1967), 1967 | 67.187.127 | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Childe Hassam 1859–1935 | Peach blossoms – Villiers-le-Bel c. | Oil on canvas | 54.6 x 46cm (21? x18?in.) | Gift of Mrs J Augustus Barnard,1979 | 1979.490.9 | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
J Alden Weir 1852–1919 | The factory village 1897 Oil on canvas | 73.7 x 96.6cm (29 x 38in.) | Gift of Cora Weir Burlingham, 1979, and Purchase, Marguerite and Frank Cosgrove Jr Fund, 1998 | 1979.487 | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
George Bellows 1882–1925 | Tennis at Newport 1919 | Oil on canvas | 101.6 x 109.9cm (40 x43?in.) | Bequest of Miss Adelaide Miltonde Groot (1876–1967), 1967 | 67.187.121 | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
John Singer Sargent 1856–1925 | Mr and Mrs IN Phelps Stokes 1897 | Oil on canvas | 214 x 101cm (84? x 39?in.) | Bequest of Edith Minturn Phelps Stokes (Mrs IN), 1938 | 38.104 | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Winslow Homer 1836–1910 | Northeaster 1895 | Oil on canvas | 87.6 x 127cm (34? x 50in.) | Gift of George A Hearn, 1910 | 10.64.5 | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum ofArt, New York
Cecilia Beaux 1855–1942 | Ernesta (Child with nurse) 1894 | Oil on canvas | 128.3 x 96.8cm (50? x38?in.) | Maria DeWitt Jesup Fund, 1965 |65.49 | Collection: The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, New York
Mary Cassatt 1844–1926 | The cup of tea c.1880–81 | Oil on canvas | 92.4 x 65.4cm (36? x25?in.) | From the Collection of JamesStillman, Gift of Dr Ernest G Stillman, 1922 | 22.16.17 | Collection: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
When they described the world of children, the American Impressionists favoured well-cared-for middle-class boys and girls, often their own sons and daughters. Adopting the theme of innocent childhood as another avenue for retreat from contemporary realities, they frequently used garden settings, which seemed to protect the youngsters from epochal change and to suggest their carefree communion with contained, hospitable nature. For example, Frank W Benson’s Children in woods shows his three daughters in a sun-drenched clearing at their summer home on the island of North Haven, Maine. The girls are reading and listening to a story, but Benson underplays even the minimal exertion of that pastime by obscuring the book that captivates them. The Realists portrayed the offspring of poor and working-class Americans but, like the Impressionists, infused their pictures with cheerful optimism and an appreciation of childhood’s sweet pleasures.
Australia
Like the American painters in the exhibition, Australian artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries crafted images of beautiful middle-class boys and girls. Portraits of polite and orderly children, often dressed in elaborate clothing, were numerous in the period.
Perceptions of childhood were changing rapidly at this time. There was a greater focus on the character and value of childhood itself, resulting in a longer period of dependence, especially for upper- and middle-class children. Even for the working classes, child labour was decreasing and compulsory schooling becoming more widespread.
Many portraits of children reveal the net of broader relationships and social contexts surrounding them. For instance, while principally a painterly study of innocent childhood, Hugh Ramsay’s portrait of Nellie Patterson also celebrates his relationship with her aunt, his patron Dame Nellie Melba – the great soprano and one of the most famous Australians of the time. Violet Teague’s portrait also depicts a socially well-connected child, who has skills and confidence beyond his years: this young prodigy Theo Scharf, the son of a prominent Melbourne society family, often painted with Teague.
Other paintings of children explored less conventional territory. E Phillips Fox’s Bathing hour (L’heure du bain) breaks some social boundaries in its depiction of a naked infant in a contemporary public setting. This was an unorthodox image at the time, although the composition emphasises the child’s nurturing and protective environment.
Cecilia Beaux
1855–1942
Ernesta (Child with nurse) 1894
Oil on canvas
Maria DeWitt Jesup Fund, 1965
Acc. 65.49
Like many women of her era, Beaux had to choose between a career and family life. Despite romances and at least one marriage proposal, she opted to pursue painting and never married or had children. She nurtured a close relationship with her sister’s six children, particularly the first-born daughter, Ernesta Drinker, later Barlow (1892–1981), who is shown here with her Irish nursemaid. The nursemaid is the child’s protector, as well as a signifier of the position in society held by the girl’s family. The low, direct vantage point emulates the young child’s point of view, and imparts an immediacy and directness to the composition, suggesting the influence of Impressionism. The painting was well received by critics and helped establish Beaux’s reputation as a painter of children.
Frank W Benson
1862–1951
Children in woods 1905
Oil on canvas
Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967
Acc. 67.187.210
Inspired by painters Edmund C Tarbell, John H Twachtman and J Alden Weir, who also investigated Impressionism in the 1890s, Benson began experimenting with plein-air painting at the end of that decade. Children in woods is a portrayal of Benson’s three daughters – Eleanor, Elisabeth and Sylvia – at the edge of a forest near the family’s summer retreat in North Haven, Maine. Benson combines a hierarchical arrangement of the three girls that recalls his academic training with lively expressive brushwork, signifying his new interest in Impressionism. Benson’s idealised images of well-dressed children in unspoiled nature reflect the desire for escape that marked the years around 1900, as urbanisation and industrialisation had an increasing impact on American life.
F Luis Mora
1874–1940
Flowers of the field 1913
Oil on canvas
Gift of Mr and Mrs Walter C Crawford, 1967
Acc. 67.24
Mora was known initially for paintings inspired by the styles and subjects of the Spanish old masters. However, as the taste for these paintings waned, he began to experiment with plein-air painting. Using a newly brightpalette, he increasingly portrayed the sort of quiet interiors and sunlit outdoor scenes favoured by his Boston teachers Edmund C Tarbell and Frank W Benson. In Flowers of the field, Mora combines elements of portraiture and floral still-life painting to render a popular theme in American Impressionism: children in nature. Although the girls are seen indoors against a flat monochromatic background inspired by Diego Velázquez, they are associated with nature through the wildflowers.
Mary Cassatt
1844–1926
Spring: Margot standing in a garden (Fillette dans un jardin) 1900
Oil on canvas
Bequest of Ruth Alms Barnard, 1981
Acc. 1982.119.2
When Cassatt moved to her country home in Mesnil-Théribus, outside of Paris, she sought models for her paintings from among the villagers. Spring: Margot standing in a garden shows Margot Lux, one of Cassatt’s favourite local models, who appears in nearly 50 of her paintings from the period. The work reflects Cassatt’s dedication to depicting childhood, a subject that increasingly occupied her after 1895 and expressed the prevailing modern belief that children are uncorrupted by the world and thus morally pure. Cassatt’s portrayal of her young model suggests she has captured a specific, fleeting instant. The flat sketchiness of the background, blocked in by loosely brushed passages of blues and greens, enhances the canvas’ appearance of being swiftly rendered. The naturalness of Margot’s stance belies the fact that she is certainly posed, just as the canvas’ spontaneous feel derives from careful planning.
Robert Henri
1865–1929
Dutch girl in white 1907
Oil on canvas
Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1950
Acc. 50.47
Henri developed a theory of painting in which art became not simply a way of depicting life, but of living it. He pointed to Diego Velázquez’s unromanticised portraits and Frans Hals’s loose, broad brushwork as exemplars of this philosophy. In 1907, on a visit to Hals’s hometown, Haarlem in the Netherlands, he began a series of portraits including his Dutch girl in white. It depicts one of his favourite local models, Martche – of whom he made at least ten portraits – dressed in a high-necked blouse and haloed by the brim of a straw hat. The bold brushwork – evident in the slashes of white and grey paint that create the tucks and puffs of her sleeve – characterises the portrait and demonstrates the vitality of Henri’s technique. While most of his Ashcan School colleagues dedicated themselves to depicting urban flux, Henri remains best known for portraits.
E Phillips Fox
1865–1915
Bathing hour (L’heure du bain) c.1909
Oil on canvas
Purchased 1946
Collection: Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
Bathing hour combines two of E Phillips Fox’s major concerns – intimate studies of domesticity, and the interplay between light and shadow. The work was probably executed entirely in the artist’s studio in Paris, although he began sketches for the painting at Chelsea Beach, near Melbourne, the year before. The composition and use of light are striking. The shadow of a structure, perhaps a bathing box, cuts across a large lower section of the work, and throws most of the two central figures into shadow. Bright sunlight breaks above, illuminating the background figures and the woman’s vibrant red hair. Fox’s choice of subject matter is equally exceptional – a naked female child in public would have been an unusual sight at the time among the upper middle classes who frequented beach resorts, such as Trouville on the French coast; it was equally unusual for her to be tended by her mother rather than a nanny. Art historian Ruth Zubans has noted that Fox developed an interest in depicting scenes of motherhood after his marriage to Ethel Carrick in 1905, though the couple had no children of their own.
Bathing hour was exhibited at the Royal Academy, London,in 1910 and later at the New Salon in Paris in 1912.
