Gallery
Thomas Gainsborough, The Blue Boy, 1770. Oil on canvas, 179.4 × 123.8 cm. San Marino, CA, the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Blue Boy’s elaborate clothing immediately catches the eye, with its shimmering blue and textured folds. This portrait that revolutionized eighteenth-century British art took inspiration from the preceding century’s dress. Gainsborough looked to the Flemish painter Anthony Van Dyke for his slashed tunic and high, lace collar. Blue Boy wears a costume that would inspire both artists and the public for decades. The portrait appeared in many galleries over the years. It also inspired children’s costume party ideas over a century later.
Thomas Watson (after Joseph Wright of Derby), Miss Kitty Dressing, 1781. Mezzotint on laid paper, 58.7 × 46.0 cm. Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago. This child’s game seems innocent, but Wright’s work explores concerns about female agency. In the eighteenth century, male artists invented clothing specially for their portraits of young women, giving these creators (and their often male patrons) control over one of the few realms women would normally manage for themselves: their dress. In the absence of adults, these girls tyrannize an oddly human-like kitten, forcing it to wear a feathered doll’s hat. Fashion is a means of having fun and proving agency for the girls here—although at the expense of the animal.
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Lavinia, Countess Spencer, and John Charles Spencer, Viscount Althorp, Later Earl Spencer, 1783–84. Oil on canvas, 147.3 x 109.9 cm. San Marino, CA, the Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. It may seem that Reynolds has painted an endearing portrait of a mother and her young daughter, but the child pictured is a boy: the future Earl Spencer, in fact. What we think of today as traditional distinctions between men and women's clothing—skirts for females, pants for males—only emerged during the nineteenth century. Even then, children's clothing consisted of identical white dresses until the dawn of the twentieth century, and gender-specific colours only caught on during the 1920s. In his white frock and pink sash, John Spencer looks like many other upper-class boys of his era.
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Fillette se regardant dans un miroir (Looking in a mirror), 1787. Oil on canvas, 73 × 59.4 cm. New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Le Brun depicts her daughter Julie—one of her favourite subjects. You may notice something odd about this work: with the mirror's angle, we should not be able to see Julie’s face. Le Brun purposefully skews the laws of perspective, perhaps reflecting a child’s own manner of seeing and thinking differently from adults (à la Rousseau). Traditionally, mirrors helped artists paint their subjects precisely, but Le Brun shows what Julie, not the audience, would see.
Thomas Lawrence, Sarah Goodin Barrett Moulton, 'Pinkie', 1794. Oil on canvas, 148 × 102.2 cm. San Marino, CA, the Huntington Museum, Library, and Botanical Gardens. Lawrence's Pinkie is one of the first examples of an image of childhood as we generally think of it today: a treasured time of innocence. Eighteenth-century painters helped to create this lasting image of childhood, one defined by its differences from adulthood. Sarah’s undyed gown reinforces the purity of her youth while also connecting her with nature, far from human interference.
Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, Marie-Annuciade-Caroline Bonaparte, Reine de Naples, avec sa fille Laetitia-Joséphine Murat (Marie Annuciade-Caroline Bonaparte, Queen of Naples, with her daughter Laetitia-Joséphine Murat), 1807. Oil on canvas, 216.5 x. 143.5 cm. Paris, Château de Versailles. By the close of the eighteenth century, styles of women's dress which emphasized the waist using stays and a full skirt disappeared, replaced by the less restrictive, high-waisted round gown. Le Brun depicts a mother and daughter. The mother, Caroline Murat, wears a round gown and the daughter dons a traditional white frock. Aside from the gold embroidery and fur trim of the mother’s dress, their costumes share remarkable similarities in silhouette and construction. A woman such as Caroline, born in 1782, would have worn this same style of dress from birth until her late twenties, when it finally fell out of favour.
Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, The New Scholar, 1879. Oil on canvas, 46.7 x 61.0 cm. Tulsa, OK, Gilcrease Museum. A sense of nostalgia pervaded late nineteenth-century American art and literature about childhood, notably in novels such as Little Women and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Brownscombe’s use of soft lines and bright colours romanticizes the anxious experience of arriving at a new school. An immaculate white pinafore and stockings draw the viewer's eye to the ‘new scholar’ who walks among mostly ragged and barefoot children.
John Collier, The Death of Albine, 1895. Oil on canvas, 137.2 x 182.9 cm. Glasgow, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre. Inspired by the tragic climax of Émile Zola’s La Fauté de l'Abbé Mouret (The sins of Abbé Mouret), Collier paints the once lively heroine Albine on her deathbed. Albine embodies the ideal of childhood innocence in the novel. Her artlessness and cheerful disposition mark her as the ideal child, despite her sixteen years, while her attachment to the vast Eden-like garden Paradou aligns childhood with nature. Even in death, Albine rests atop the flowers to which she was so devoted.
Cecilia Beaux, Ernesta (Child with Nurse), 1894. Oil on canvas, 128.3 x 96.8 cm. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Beaux paints Ernesta in the classic white baby dress, a favourite of parents for 150 years. The whiteness of the dress, connoting purity and virtue, reinforces the angelic qualities of Ernesta’s face. At the same time, its length endows her with more adult-like proportions, bringing her in line with nineteenth-century aesthetics.