exploring childhood - National Gallery of Ireland

Transcription

National Gallery of Ireland /
Gailearaí Náisiúnta na hÉireann
EXPLORING
CHILDHOOD
at the National
Gallery of Ireland
from 1570–1950
National Gallery of Ireland /
Gailearaí Náisiúnta na hÉireann
EXPLORING
CHILDHOOD
at the National
Gallery of Ireland
from 1570–1950
Gaye Ashford
Joanne Drum
Sarah Edmondson
Niamh MacNally
Contents
1
Foreword
Sean Rainbird, Director, National Gallery of Ireland
2
Introduction: Childhood
Dr Marie Bourke, Keeper, Head of Education, National Gallery of Ireland
4
Exploring Irish Childhood through the National Gallery of Ireland’s Collection
Dr Gaye Ashford, History Tutor, St Patrick’s College/Dublin City University
5
Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1739–1808), Revd. Walter Blake Kirwan (1754–1805)
Preaching on Behalf of the Orphan House, Dublin, 1806
6
Stephen Slaughter (1697–1765), A Lady and Child, c.1745
7
Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1739–1808), Frederic Hervey, Bishop of Derry and
4th Earl of Bristol (1730–1803), with his Granddaughter, Lady Caroline Crichton
(1779–1856), in the Gardens of the Villa Borghese, Rome, c.1790
8
Elizabeth Still Stanhope, Countess of Harrington (c.1819–1912),
Wheelbarrow with six of the Artist’s Children, c.1850
9
Harry Aaron Kernoff (1900–74), Portrait of a Girl, 1952
10 Adam Buck (1759–1833), Portrait of the Edgeworth Family, 1787
11 Howard Helmick (1845–1907), The Schoolmaster’s Moment of Leisure, c.1888
12 Richard Thomas Moynan (1856–1906), ‘Military Manoeuvres’, 1891
13 Samuel McCloy (1831–1904), Daydreams
14 Augustus Nicholas Burke (c.1838–1891), A Connemara Girl
15
ii
Timeline - Ireland: Social and Political 1700 –1950
17
Paintings from the European Collections Illustrating the Face of Childhood
Joanne Drum (JD), Education Officer, Administration, and Niamh MacNally (NMN),
Assistant Curator, Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Ireland
18 Giovanni Battista Moroni (c.1525–1578), Portrait of a Gentleman and his two Children, c.1570
19 Aelbert Cuyp (1620–91), Landscape with a Youth and his Tutor on Horseback, c.1650–52
20 Jan Steen (1626–79), The Village School, c.1665
21 Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779), Les Tours de Cartes (Card Tricks), c.1735
22 William Hogarth (1697–1764), Portrait of the Mackinen Children, 1747
23 Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88), The Cottage Girl, 1785
24 Henry Pelham (1749–1806), Portrait of Master Lewis Farley Johnston, 1779
25 Baron Gérard (1770–1837), Julie Bonaparte as Queen of Spain
with her Daughters Zénaïde and Charlotte, 1808–09
26 Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (1827–1906), The Gleaners, 1854
27 Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947), Boy Eating Cherries, 1895
28 Walter Frederick Osborne (1859–1903), The Dolls’ School, 1900
29 Gabriele Münter (1877–1962), Girl with a Red Ribbon, 1908
30 Dod Procter (1892–1972), A Girl Asleep, c.1925–30
31 Louis le Brocquy (1916–2012), A Family, 1951
32
Suggestions for Further Reading
34
Guidelines for Teachers
Sarah Edmondson, Art Teacher, Killinarden Community School, Dublin
41
Acknowledgements
iii
iv
Foreword
Sean Rainbird,
Director, National Gallery of Ireland
The National Gallery of Ireland is fortunate in having
a surprisingly varied collection of paintings illustrating
different aspects of childhood and created by a range of
artists from between 1570 to 1950. This book illustrates
twenty-four paintings executed by Irish and European
artists and two American painters.
The introductory essay on the history of childhood
in Ireland during the period 1757–1951, written by
Gaye Ashford, provides an overview of the different
developments that influenced the life of the child.
Using the headings ‘the child and the family’, ‘children’s
education’ and ‘children’s leisure’, she shows how
views about children and childhood shifted between
the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, leading to
new understandings and eventual recognition that
childhood was a training ground for adulthood.
The ten images exploring childhood and family life,
from the Gallery’s collection, reflect developments in
Irish society, while also showing changes in artistic
conventions and practices.
This book (and downloadable pdf) provides accessible
resources for schools (see Sarah Edmondson’s Guidelines
for Teachers), as noted in The Arts in Education Charter
published by the Departments of Education and Skills,
and Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (2012). As the
National Gallery of Ireland is currently celebrating the
150th Anniversary of its opening in 1864, a copy is being
gifted to secondary schools to draw their attention to the
availability of NGI resources as downloadable pdfs at
www.nationalgallery.ie under ‘learning’, for use with our
collections. It also serves as an encouragement to schools
to visit the National Gallery of Ireland on guided tours.
I am indebted to the following for their assistance on
this project: all of the authors under the guidance of
Marie Bourke, Head of Education, the Department of
Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the Department
of Education and Skills. I also gratefully acknowledge
Matheson for their support of Children’s and Family
Programmes at the National Gallery of Ireland. With this
book we present the face of childhood, which we hope
provides our visitors with many enjoyable opportunities
for engaging with the paintings in the National Gallery.
Also included is a selection of individual entries on
fourteen works from the Gallery’s European collections,
written by Niamh MacNally and Joanne Drum,
featuring artists from Italy – Giovanni Battista Moroni;
the Netherlands – Jan Steen and Aelbert Cuyp; Britain
– Thomas Gainsborough, William Hogarth, William
Bartlett, Philip Reinagle and Dod Procter; Germany –
Johann Zoffany and Gabriele Münter; France – Jules
Breton, Baron Gérard, Pierre Bonnard and Jean-Siméon
Chardin; and Ireland – Walter Osborne and Louis le
Brocquy. Irish artists in the introductory essay include
Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Harry Kernoff, Richard T.
Moynan, Samuel McCloy, Stephen Slaughter, Augustus
Burke, Adam Buck and Elizabeth Still Stanhope,
Countess of Harrington; two American painters, Henry
Pelham and Howard Helmick, are also discussed.
1
Introduction: Childhood
Dr Marie Bourke, Keeper,
Head of Education
Looking at childhood through paintings is the subject
of this book, which charts a brief history of childhood
in Ireland, before widening the lens to explore images
by Irish, European and American artists. The range
of themes – the concept of youth and innocence;
motherhood, fatherhood and the family; poverty;
schools and learning; fashion; playtime, fun and games;
child labour and the status of the child in society –
illustrate children in the context of their time. As you
gaze on these images, reflect on the fact that childhood
as we think of it today is a relatively new concept.
Children for centuries were seen as small adults, more
fragile and defenceless than grown-ups but basically just
the same. They wore adult clothes, played adult games,
ate adult food and did their share of family work.
Ideas about childhood began to change with the social
and religious developments that came about in Europe
in the 1600s. During the following centuries, more
attention began to focus on children, their health and
wellbeing, methods of childrearing and education as
childhood began to be understood as a time set apart
from adulthood. What caused society to see children
differently and to pay more attention to schooling,
was the influential writings of philosophers like John
Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, which were read in
Ireland, Britain and Europe from the 1700s onwards. As
views about children changed, they became perceived
as innocent infants with minds that could be shaped
and developed by their parents, among others. Interest
in childrearing and education gradually developed,
spurred on by the onset of industrialisation and the
emergence of new patterns of work and life.
Pregnancy was also significant as new ideas about
childhood addressed the health of the unborn baby
and the mother, at a time when infant mortality
throughout Europe was high. Improper feeding was
seen as a cause of infant death and mothers were
encouraged to breastfeed their babies. By the late 1800s,
2
the development of pasteurisation and the recognition
of the value of cows’ milk resulted in bottle feeding
becoming important.
Playtime became recognised as a way of educating
children. Whereas prior to the 1800s, some societies
thought play was wasteful and children’s games were
shared with adults, when new children’s toys and
games were created they provided potential lessons in
geography, history, science and moral behaviour. After
1800, the growing interest in childhood generated
cheap colourful toys, and as games and directed play
developed the ability to shape social rules, thus, dolls,
tea-sets and toy sewing machines helped to define a
woman’s role as mother and home-maker, just as boys’
carpentry and tool sets created house builders, soldiers,
engineers and scientists.
How much is known about childhood experiences in
the past? Before objects were created for children, their
lives were largely invisible. While history frequently
focused on politics and economics, it often omitted
links to the changing world of mothers and children,
also leaving out poorer children because they left little
historical evidence of their childhood. For this reason,
the works of art and other objects in the collections of
museums and galleries are significant in highlighting
the experiences of childhood over past centuries. An
exhibition on this theme would be another way to
explore childhood in its social historical contexts.
This book shows the growing distinction between
childhood and adulthood and helps to illustrate the
creation of the child’s own material world.
—
William Mulready (1786–1863), The Toyseller, 1857–1863, Oil on canvas, 112 x 142 cm.
Purchased in 1891. NGI.387
The life-size painting shows a peddler on his knees
offering a rattle from his basket of toys to a child in
the arms of its mother. The mother turns to the young
child, who appears upset, possibly by the noise of the
rattle. The figures are arranged in a foreground frieze
against a rural backdrop in a stage-like scene. It is
set in a wooded landscape with a small cottage on a
warm day, cloudy sky and blue water in the distance.
Childhood was an important subject for Mulready,
for which he drew on Dutch seventeenth-century
prototypes for his early genre paintings. Well-known
for his drawing prowess, evident in the finely executed
figures, the painting displays a rich colour palette and
meticulous brushwork. One of the artist’s last works,
painted in his 70s, it was left unfinished after his
death. Twenty years earlier he executed a small oil
sketch of this subject (Victoria and Albert Museum).
Born in Ennis and active in England, Mulready
became a Royal Academician in 1816, exhibited at
the RA between 1804 and 1862, and at the Royal
Hibernian Academy 1817–1845. This Irish painter
rose to the top of the British art establishment.
3
Exploring Irish Childhood
through the National Gallery
of Ireland’s Collection
Dr Gaye Ashford, History Tutor,
St Patricks College/Dublin City University
The artistic representation of children in the National
Gallery of Ireland’s art collection provides a useful
medium through which the evolution of the concepts
of childhood that have operated in Ireland may be
viewed. Over the course of the long eighteenth-century,
people’s views and disposition towards children and
childhood shifted, and a new understanding emerged
that had taken firm hold by the 1820s. At the close of
the nineteenth century, childhood was acknowledged
as a training ground for adulthood, its distinctness and
innocence increasingly highlighted in art during the
twentieth century.
John Locke (1632–1704) first articulated the importance
of childhood experiences to the development of the
individual and society in his 1693 publication Some
Thoughts Concerning Education (London, 1693 and
in revised editions in Dublin between 1728 and 1738)
and his views still possess authority. The publication
of Philippe Ariès’s (1914–84) seminal work Centuries of
Childhood in 1960 established the history of childhood
as an active area of historical study and prompted an
interest in children’s life stories that continues today.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century, childrearing
was based on seventeenth-century precepts, premised
upon the beliefs and practices that parents had
experienced as children, but by the close of the
century, parents had adopted new approaches towards
children, their upbringing, welfare, education and
preparation for adult life. As part of the Anglophone
world, eighteenth-century Irish parents had access to
pamphlets and childrearing books (a significant feature
of the century) such as William Buchan’s Domestic
Medicine (Edinburgh, 1769), so that in many ways
the concept of childhood that emerged in Ireland over
the course of the eighteenth century mirrored that
operating in the wider European environment. But,
the unique political, social and economic conditions
prevailing in Ireland facilitated the development in
4
many respects of specifically Irish attitudes towards
children and childhood. These views predominated in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, most notably
regarding Irish children’s education.
Within Ireland as in Europe, between 1700 and 1900
children were brought more firmly into the centre of
society and family life. By 1800 the policies, practices
and ideologies that had emerged in Ireland provided
the essential framework for a more comprehensive
inclusion of children in all social and political
considerations by the 1900s. These were further
enhanced with the establishment of the Irish Free State
in 1922 and continue today.
The child in the family
The attitudes of parents and societies shape the
expectations of children and childhood and though
all children in the past experienced childhood there
were marked differences between their experiences
based on class and gender, the bedrock of eighteenthcentury Ireland. The plight of the pauper and indeed
the ‘unwanted’ child became a matter of considerable
debate in Ireland and Europe during the 1700s leading
to the establishment in Ireland in 1703 first of a
workhouse in which orphaned and foundling children
were placed and in 1730, of a specific institution
dedicated to the care of these children – the Dublin
Foundling Hospital.
—
Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1739–1808), Revd.
Walter Blake Kirwan (1754–1805) Preaching on
Behalf of the Orphan House, Dublin, 1806 (after
an oil c.1800 destroyed). Engraved by William
Ward (1766–1826). Mezzotint, 69.5 x 75 cm.
Purchased in 1906. NGI.10,050
Kirwan, who was Dean of Killala, was a Catholic
who converted to Protestantism and was known as
a preacher. In 1791 the governors of a new home for
destitute girls on the northside of Dublin invited
Kirwan to preach. The charity, incorporated by the
Irish Parliament in 1800 as ‘The Female Orphan
House’, paid £250 for the painting that year. It later
disappeared and is known from this mezzotint.
5
Hugh Douglas Hamilton’s portrayal of Rev. Dean
Kirwan shows him pleading the cause of these destitute
orphans in a sermon to a well-appointed audience of
mainly women. It promotes an idealised picture of Irish
pauper and foundling children, ignoring the reality
of their existence. The high mortality rate amongst
children in Dublin’s foundling hospital was primarily
caused by malnutrition and neglect. The regular public
displays of ‘healthy’ pauper children were designed to
salve the Christian and reformist conscience of wealthy
viewers while also tugging open their purse strings. It is
clear that the affectionate familial relationship emerging
within the domestic environment in Ireland was not
mirrored in institutions, such as the workhouses,
foundling hospitals, Charter schools or, later, the
houses of industry. The absence of ‘pauper’ children
in eighteenth-century Irish landscape paintings reflects
society’s attitude towards these children. Just as they
are notable in their absence from early Irish landscape
paintings, so too, to a large extent, are they absent from
the official record – this was not the case for European
childhood and art. A notable exception is Hamilton’s
Cries of Dublin which provides quiet glimpses of
ordinary lives, including children’s.
By the late eighteenth century the historic subordination
of the child to the parent and, in particular, the
patriarch was altering. Although men retained
ultimate authority, women were pivotal in shaping
the interpretation and comprehension of childhood
emerging in Ireland between 1750 and 1850. As these
expectations and behaviours changed, so the maternal
role adapted to embrace these transformations and
adjustments. The strict formality of the family group,
part of the northern European/Netherlands tradition,
visible in Stephen Slaughter’s A Lady and Child (c.1745),
was no longer the desired representation of family life.
6
—
Stephen Slaughter (1697–1765), A Lady and
Child, c.1745, Oil on canvas, 130 x 104 cm.
Bequeathed by Sir Hugh Lane, 1918. NGI.797
The English portrait painter Stephen Slaughter moved
between Dublin and London in the 1730s and 1740s,
undertaking portraits of landed families. The unknown
subjects show his interest in fine clothes and are posed
in a traditional manner with an idealised background.
Hugh Douglas Hamilton’s depiction of Bishop
Frederick Hervey and his granddaughter (c.1790)
more accurately reflects the accepted model of the
relationship between adult and child and the modern
concept of childhood then emerging. Parents were
keen to portray the extent of their protection towards
children, while also displaying signs of friendship and
affection – children posed naturally beside loving
parents. This was particularly apparent among elite and
gentry families and as a theme endured in the artistic
tradition. That of the Stanhope children (c.1850)
epitomises this relaxed friendship and maternalism,
and the fact that this painting was completed by their
mother, Elizabeth, Countess of Harrington, further
reinforces this point.
—
Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740–1808), Frederick
Hervey, Bishop of Derry and 4th Earl of Bristol
(1730–1803), with his Granddaughter, Lady
Caroline Crichton (1779–1856), in the Gardens of
the Villa Borghese, Rome, c.1790,
Oil on canvas, 224.4 x 119.5 cm. Purchased 1981.
NGI.4350
The Earl Bishop of Derry, a traveller and collector,
was visited in Rome in 1787 by his granddaughter
Caroline and her mother, Lady Mary Erne. The girl
points to a relief of the Seasons on a Roman altar
of the twelve Gods. Hamilton was an immensely
successful Irish painter in oils and pastels, of portraits
and subject pictures, with a career in Dublin, London
and Rome.
7
—
Elizabeth Still Stanhope, Countess of
Harrington (c.1819–1912), Wheelbarrow with six
of the Artist’s Children, c.1850,
Watercolour and graphite on paper, 11.3 x 16.5 cm.
Elizabeth Still was born about 1819. In 1839 she
married Charles Wyndham Stanhope, who was
to succeed, on 22 February 1866, as the 7th Earl of
Harrington. This group shows six of the artist’s twelve
children (Philippa Leicester, Fanny Joanna, Caroline
Margaret, Fitzroy William, Lincoln Edwin, Charles
Augustus), and given the children’s ages, it has been
dated to circa 1850. This is a typical example of
Elizabeth’s drawing of a Victorian household.
8
As a more demonstrably affectionate relationship
between adult and child developed, the child as an
individual also began to emerge. A central constituent
of Locke’s theory of education was the recognition of
children’s individuality. Locke’s influence was wideranging, from Europe to America, and enduring.
More than any other writer his ideas defined the
debate surrounding the notion of childhood. His work
had a profound influence in Ireland, more so than
that of Rousseau, and was a significant milestone in
promoting a more engaged approach towards children,
child rearing and childhood experiences among elite
and gentry social groups from the eighteenth to the
nineteenth centuries. Linked to this new approach
towards childhood, increasingly children’s lives were
considered worthy of record. Although medical
advances across the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries improved children’s well-being, children’s
mortality rates remained high. Given this, parents now
sought to record the presence of a deceased child in
their lives. Unlike large commissioned works, children’s
miniatures (see Pelham’s portrait miniature of Master
Lewis Farley Johnston, 1779) were treasured but were for
private family consumption, not public display.
From the middle of the nineteenth century, and under
the influence of the Romantic Movement, the child
was increasingly portrayed with sentimentality and as
an innocent – a far cry from the strict orthodoxy of the
medieval interpretation of children as born with evil.
Just as Britain and parts of Ireland underwent rapid
economic and social change, so too the naturalism
of earlier studies of children and childhood gave way
to the Victorian ideal of family values, an ideal that
promoted the ‘innocence of childhood’ and sought to
represent children as natural creatures, placing them in
their natural environment.
By the 1850s, the contradictions between living and
working conditions for the working classes and the
Victorian middle-class notion of childhood innocence
promoted calls for social reform, and these, in
particular, concerned children. In Ireland, however,
philanthropic and reform movements associated with
children’s well-being were subordinated to religious
convictions and dissent in keeping with the power and
influence of the main institutional churches. The belief
in the individuality of children and the distinctiveness
of childhood had taken firm hold by the twentieth
century, as illustrated in Kernoff’s studied Portrait of
a Girl.
But for the poor, the harshness and complexities of
contemporary life, and particularly Dublin’s notorious
slum conditions, are absent from many twentiethcentury paintings of Irish children. These were more
suited to the new technology of photography.
—
Harry Aaron Kernoff (1900–74), Portrait of a
Girl, 1952, Charcoal on paper, 42.2 x 28.1 cm.
Presented by Miss L. Kernoff, 1975. NGI.3129
© The Artist’s Estate
Kernoff was London-born to Jewish parents of mixed
Russian and Spanish descent, and moved to Dublin
at an early age where he attended the Metropolitan
School of Art. A prolific artist he painted portraits of
literary and theatrical figures, and produced woodcuts
(three books were published). A sharp observer of
people with a keen eye for faces, he captures the young
girl in charcoal with her shy eyes, small nose and
sensitive mouth.
9
—
Adam Buck (1759–1833), Portrait of the
Edgeworth Family, 1787, Coloured pencil,
watercolour and graphite on paper, 25.1 x 30.4 cm.
Purchased in 2006. NGI.2006.14
10
The Edgeworth family of Edgeworthstown, Co.
Longford, is depicted informally: Richard Lovell
Edgeworth (1744–1817) with his third wife, Elizabeth
Sneyd, and children, his eldest daughter, Maria
(1767–1849), author of Castle Rackrent (1800),
opposite her father. Richard and Maria Edgeworth
published Practical Education (1798), which gained
an international reputation. Richard had four wives
and fathered twenty-two children. The Cork-born
miniature painter Adam Buck set up practice in
Dublin, before settling in London where he had a
successful career.
Children’s education
Education is of particular significance in exploring
childhood because it embraced the three parties
involved: the children who availed of it, the parents
who actively sought it for their children, and for the
less well-off, the government, who was ostensibly the
provider of it. Though the quality and quantity of
education in eighteenth-century Ireland was varied,
parents of all classes enthusiastically sought it for their
children. Of particular significance to the educational
debate in eighteenth-century Ireland and abroad was
the contribution of County Longford’s Richard Lovell
Edgeworth and his daughter Maria who drew heavily
upon their own large family’s experiences. Consistent
with the view that childhood was a preparation for
adulthood, Irish children’s education expanded and
increasingly prepared them to embrace the economic
opportunities available. The expansion of the female
role within the domestic environment, visible from the
1750s, was also reflected in an increase in the provision
of female education, one that embraced elite, middling,
peasant, pauper and institutional children. Though
Locke supported the idea of combining education with
labour, in Ireland it was taken to its extreme by the
Charter school system and, later, the Industrial schools.
The abuses within these systems again illustrate the
different attitudes adopted towards Irish pauper children
as opposed to children protected within the family
home. In order to improve on the informal hedge school
system, the Society for the Promotion of the Education
of the Poor in Ireland (the Kildare Place Society), which
endorsed a new state-supported, non-denominational
system of primary education, was established in 1811 and
it functioned for two decades before being superseded in
1831 by the non-denominational Irish National School
system. By the end of the nineteenth century this
system had become predominantly denominational.
Notwithstanding this, education – embraced by all
classes – remained the cornerstone for Ireland’s economic
growth from the 1920s.
—
Howard Helmick (1845–1907), The
Schoolmaster’s Moment of Leisure, c.1888
Watercolour and gouache on paper, 31.5 x 26.9 cm.
Schoolmasters were respected members of the
community and private, or ‘hedge’ school, teachers
often received fuel for the schoolroom and food to
pay for their services. This schoolroom scene with
its earthen floor, unlined thatched roof, stools and
benches, shows the master playing a wooden flute,
while a small boy wears a dunce’s hat. The American
artist Helmick’s understanding of rural life was
reflected in a range of Irish subject pictures.
11
—
Richard Thomas Moynan (1856–1906), ‘Military
Manoeuvres’, 1891, Oil on canvas, 148 x 240 cm.
Purchased 1982. NGI.4364
Ragged barefoot children play at being a military
band using household objects as instruments. They
tease a soldier with his lady friend as others watch.
The trooper is a member of the Fourth Royal Irish
Dragoon Guards in the walking-out uniform of the
cavalry regiment, based in Ireland in the 1880s. The
likely setting is Leixlip, Co. Kildare. The Dublinborn Moynan painted portraits and landscapes,
although his forte was genre scenes of everyday life.
Children’s leisure
Throughout history, the experience of childhood within
the home or institution, at work or school, set the
contexts in which children lived and which shaped their
understanding. By the late eighteenth century children
12
had emerged into the public sphere in their own right,
and as companions to their parents through their
participation in leisure activities and as consumers. The
idea that childhood should be both a period of education
and enjoyment had taken firm hold so that just as art
began to represent the domestic sphere, children were
also depicted as having time to play.
Play and ‘childish actions’ were viewed as beneficial to
the development of the mind, emotions and physical
well-being of the child. The benefits of fresh air to
children’s health were recognised from the eighteenth
century and children were encouraged to play in the
open air. Irish children of all social classes attended
horse races, played cricket and football, and also
delighted in following impromptu military displays on
city streets or in Dublin’s Phoenix Park.
Indoor leisure activities, such as card playing, commerce,
loo and chess were complemented by sewing, singing,
music and dancing. But popular games that required
specialist equipment such as tennis or chess – common
—
Samuel McCloy (1831–1904), Daydreams,
Oil on canvas, 41 x 51 cm. Purchased in 1974.
NGI.4119
The Lisburn-born McCloy studied in Belfast and
London and became Master of the Waterford School
of Art. In 1875 he returned to Belfast, settling finally
in London. He enjoyed portraying the happier side
of ordinary rural life, such as these two girls lost in
a world of reading and daydreaming. The idyllic
countryside setting complements the scene.
among the rich – were less so among the poor. They
preferred to play football, cards, dice, shuttles, ninepins, nine-holes and all fours.
One of the most significant features of nineteenthcentury Ireland was the movement from a society
without consumers, to one defined by consumer
culture, and this included children. While the
word ‘toy’ originally had no essential connection to
childhood, being any petty or pretty commodity of
little value, the manufacture and sale of toys increased
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By
the eighteenth century, more toys were specifically
designed and made for children’s use and sold in toy
shops and by the nineteenth, the word ‘toy’ was clearly
13
associated with childhood. This is not to say that
‘children’s toys’ were unavailable earlier. Clearly toys
specific to children were. Though the ‘dolls house’ is
locatable in the eighteenth century, it was employed as
an object of instruction and not as a childhood toy. By
the nineteenth century, dolls, dolls houses and other
toys, such as lead soldiers, were designed specifically
for use by Irish children.
Following on from an increase in the number of books
available about children were books for children,
albeit only for those literate and able to afford them.
This movement towards a commercialised market
for children’s literature was capitalised on by John
Newbury who published A Little Pretty Pocket-Book in
1744, considered the first children’s book. These were
specifically designed to appeal to children in their
production, marketing and storyline and were widely
available in Ireland.
The instincts of a commercial and industrial Britain
applied themselves not only to the supply of children’s
toys and games but also initiated the representation of
children as marketing tools, specifically focusing on
their innocence, simplicity and playfulness. Unlike
trends in England and Europe, where Sir John Everett
Millais’s Bubbles was purloined to promote Pears soap
for many generations, the portrayal of the nineteenthcentury Irish peasant or pauper child was mediated
by the narrative of the artist. The staged depictions
of peasant children, as in Augustus Nicholas Burke’s
(c.1838–91) mid-century A Connemara Girl, which
ignores the harsh realities of such children’s lives
at the time of the Famine, is reflective of the rise of
tourism and a preferred representation of Ireland and
its children.
Even though paintings of children and family life reflect
societal changes in Ireland over the years, they are not
solely evidential. They are also illustrative of changes in
artistic conventions and practices. Allied to historical
research, however, artistic representations of children,
when brought together through the National Gallery
of Ireland’s art collection, provide a useful template to
trace the emerging ideas that surrounded Irish children
and Irish childhood in the period 1750 to 1950.
14
—
Augustus Nicholas Burke (c.1838–91),
A Connemara Girl,
Oil on canvas, 63 x 48 cm.
Presented by Mrs Ida Monahan, 1951. NGI.1212
Burke came from County Galway and visited
Connemara in the 1860s. While the girl is painted
on a rocky headland gathering heather with goats,
she more than likely posed in the studio for this
picture. Having trained in London, Burke moved
to Dublin, travelled to Brittany and Holland, and
became Professor of Painting at the Royal Hibernian
Academy. In 1882, following the murder of his
brother the Under Secretary, Thomas Burke, he left
for London and Italy.
Timeline - Ireland: Social
and Political 1700–1950
Blue Coat School (the King’s Hospital)
opened in Dublin
1695
14% of Irish land held by Catholics
Penal Laws enacted – rights of Irish
Catholics restricted in education, armsbearing, horse owning and the Catholic
clergy banished
1693
John Locke’s influential Some Thoughts
Concerning Education published
1703
Dublin Workhouse and Foundling Hospital
founded
1729/30 Dublin’s Workhouse and Foundling
Hospital restricted entry to foundling
children only
1741 London’s Foundling Hospital opened
First performance of Handel’s Messiah in
Fishamble Street, Music Hall
1762
Jean-Jacques Rousseau published Emil
1766
American War of Independence
1769
Dr William Buchan published Domestic
Medicine
1798
United Irishmen Rising
1800
Act of Union – Ireland to be governed
henceforth by Westminster
Maria Edgeworth’s novel Castle Rackrent
published
1802
The Factories Acts: first of a series of Acts
passed by the United Kingdom Parliament
to limit the number of hours worked by
women and children, initially in the textile
industry, then later in all industries
1820
Accession of George IV
1823
Royal Hibernian Academy founded
1829
Accession of William IV
Catholic Emancipation Act passed
1837
Accession of Queen Victoria
1838
Education Acts enacted in Ireland
Poor Laws for Ireland passed and enacted
1841
Population of Ireland census: 8,175,124
1845–50 The Irish Famine results in widespread
death and emigration
1853
International Great Exhibition of Art –
Industry in Dublin
1669
1861–65
1864
1884
1889
1890
1898
1905
1908
1914–18
1916
1919–21
1922–23
1925
1928
1938
1939–45
1943
1949
American Civil War
National Gallery of Ireland opened
Gaelic Athletic Association established
The National Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Children (Irish Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children (1956))
founded
National Library of Ireland and Dublin
Museum of Science and Art open
The Irish Literary Theatre founded which
became the Abbey Theatre in 1904
Sinn Féin party formed by Arthur Griffith
(1871–1922)
Municipal Gallery of Modern Art opens
(renamed The Hugh Lane Gallery (1975);
Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane
(2002))
First World War (America entered in 1917)
Home Rule Bill for Ireland suspended
Easter Rising – Irish Republic proclaimed
in Dublin
Anglo-Irish Treaty signed, resulting in the
creation of the Irish Free State
Civil War between pro- and anti-treaty
supporters
W. B. Yeats (1865–1939) awarded Nobel
Prize for Literature
George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) awarded
Nobel Prize for Literature
Partition of the island of Ireland confirmed
by tripartite agreement
Wall Street Crash heralds the Great
Depression (1929–mid 1930s)
Douglas Hyde (1860–1947) becomes first
President of Ireland
Second World War
Irish Exhibition of Living Art founded
Ireland Act – Republic of Ireland
inaugurated
15
16
Paintings from the Irish,
European and American Collections
Illustrating the Face of Childhood
Exploring Childhood at the National Gallery of Ireland
includes twenty-four paintings executed between
c.1570 and 1951 by Irish, European and two American
painters. Having traced a brief history of childhood
in Ireland, illustrated by ten works, a further fourteen
have been selected to broaden the perspective of images
of children.
The earliest work is by an Italian painter Giovanni
Battista Moroni (c.1525–78) entitled Portrait of a
Gentleman and his two Children, c.1570. Moroni is
considered one of the greatest Renaissance painters of
portraits and this affectionate image of a father with
his children is a superb example of his work. The most
modern composition in this book is Louis le Brocquy’s
(1916–2012), A Family, 1951, depicting one of a series
of family paintings on this subject that signalled a
change in the artist’s work from his colourful paintings
of the 1940s to a more neutral palette of grey, black
and white, referred to as his Grey Period. This painting
won the Prealpina Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1956.
This selection of paintings spans a four-hundred-year
period between 1570 and 1950 and shows the growing
distinction between childhood and adulthood and the
creation of the child’s own material world.
Giovanni Battista Moroni (c.1525–78),
Portrait of a Gentleman and his two Children, c.1570
Aelbert Cuyp (1620–1691),
Landscape with a Youth and his Tutor on Horseback,
c.1650–52
Jan Steen (1626–79),
The Village School, c.1665
Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779),
Les Tours de Cartes (Card Tricks), c.1735
William Hogarth (1697–1764),
Portrait of the Mackinen Children, 1747
Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88),
The Cottage Girl, 1785
Henry Pelham (1749–1806),
Portrait of Master Lewis Farley Johnston, 1779
Baron Gérard (1770–1837),
Julie Bonaparte as Queen of Spain with her
Daughters Zénaïde and Charlotte, 1808–09
Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (1827–1906),
The Gleaners, 1854
Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947),
Boy Eating Cherries, 1895
Walter Frederick Osborne (1859–1903),
The Dolls’ School, 1900
Gabriele Münter (1877–1962),
Girl with a Red Ribbon, 1908
Dod Procter (1892–1972),
A Girl Asleep, c.1925-1930
Louis le Brocquy (1916–2012),
A Family, 1951
17
Portrait of a Gentleman
and his two Children,
c.1570
This portrait has traditionally been thought to depict a
widower and his children, but there is no clear evidence
to support this theory and the family has not been
identified. The father is shown in an affectionate pose,
with a protective hand on the shoulder of each child. It
is unusual to see a portrait of a father and his children
from this time. Girls were more usually portrayed with
their mothers, but this alone does not confirm that
the man was a widower. The father’s fashionable black
clothes are lightened only by small white ruffs at the
collar and cuffs, while the children, in their matching
yet contrasting dresses, give colour and vibrancy to the
painting. On the left, the older child wears a yellow
skirt and her hair is dressed with flowers. The shorthaired younger child on the right wears a red skirt and
holds an apple. It is possible that this younger child is a
boy dressed in young girl’s clothing, as was the custom
at the time. The family share the same grey-brown
eyes, and the resemblance between father and children
is unmistakable.
—
Giovanni Battista Moroni (c.1525–78),
Oil on canvas, 125.3 x 98 cm.
18
—
Giovanni Battista Moroni was best-known for his
elegant and naturalistic portraits, and is considered to
be one of the greatest portrait painters of sixteenthcentury Italy. The name of his home town near
Bergamo, Albino, can be deciphered on one of the
letters on the table in the painting. In local society,
there was great demand for naturalistic and skilled
portraits and Moroni received many commissions from
the local aristocracy, scholars and businessmen. This
is an unusual work, as Moroni rarely painted group
portraits, or indeed portraits of children. The artist was
clearly influenced by his great Venetian contemporary,
Titian. There is no evidence that he travelled to Venice,
but Moroni and Titian certainly met in Trent, where
they worked at the same time as the early sessions of
the Council of Trent. JD
Landscape with a
Youth and his Tutor on
Horseback, c.1650–52
—
Aelbert Cuyp (1620–91),
Oil on canvas, 109.2 x 149.8 cm. Purchased with
the support of the Heritage Fund, 2005. NGI.4758
Equestrian pursuits were seen as an essential
component of life for the nobility in seventeenthcentury Holland. They were viewed as a fundamental
part of the education of a young man of high rank
and status. In Cuyp’s majestic portrait, a juvenile
equestrian in fashionable attire is being taught the
art of horsemanship by an older companion, who
indicates the direction of the prey with his whip. The
juxtaposition of the classes, so crucial to the notion of
power, prestige and authority, generated by equestrian
portraits, is shown here as the hunters on horseback are
elevated to a height, while the pages on foot chase after
the pack of dogs below. Cuyp makes the suggestion
that this young rider is the owner of the expansive
countryside through which he hunts, even though the
landscape illustrated is imaginary. Trappings of wealth
abound, from the elaborate plumed hats and lavish
velvet jackets with split sleeves of the riders to their
well-bred mounts. The youth’s aristocratic pose, with
elbow cocked and whip held between the middle and
third fingers of his left hand, befits his station. Although
the main protagonists have halted, Cuyp successfully
captures the sense of an active hunt, travelling at speed.
—
Aelbert Cuyp, a native of Dordrecht, was one of the
leading Dutch landscape painters of the seventeenth
century. Regarded as the Dutch equivalent of Claude
Lorrain (c.1604–82), the French painter of ideal
landscapes and pastoral scenes, Cuyp is best known
for his idyllic views of the Dutch countryside featuring
cows lit by a soft, golden sunlight. His father, Jacob
Cuyp (1594–1652), who specialised in painting portraits
of families and children, introduced him to landscape
portraiture. During the eighteenth century, Cuyp’s
work was immensely popular with English, Scottish
and Irish collectors. This painting was once owned
by the Dukes of Leinster, either James FitzGerald, 1st
Duke of Leinster (1722–73), or his son William (1749–
1804), and it most likely hung for a time in Leinster
House, Dublin. NMN
19
The Village School,
c.1665
In this crowded schoolhouse scene in seventeenthcentury Holland, we see a schoolmaster about to hit a
boy who holds out his hand for punishment. The boy’s
work lies on the floor, torn and marked. As he rubs
his tears away, the girl next to him stares at his hand
with a curious expression that could be either gleeful
or a grimace of distaste. The education system at the
time was badly organised, and payment for teachers
was poor. Many teachers had to take second jobs to
survive, and complaints of unqualified, uneducated and
uninterested teachers were frequently made. Corporal
punishment was considered a normal part of schooling
at this time, and hitting a child was not viewed as
harsh, as long as it was not done in anger. Does the
hourglass on the wall suggest the passing of, or, indeed,
the wasting of the children’s time? The shears allude
to the responsibilities that many children, particularly
in rural areas, would have had at home, which might
have made attendance at school sporadic. The bottles
on the shelf probably contain alcohol, hinting at the
common, though usually incorrect, complaint of
drunken schoolmasters. The boxes hanging on the
back wall are seventeenth-century ‘school bags’ that
Dutch children used to carry their books.
—
Oil on canvas, 110.5 x 80.2 cm.
Purchased in1879. NGI.226
20
—
Jan Steen was born in Leiden to a Catholic family
in 1626. He is known as a superb storyteller and his
paintings are often humorous, yet, at the same time,
contain a moral message. Due to unprecedented
economic prosperity, the arts flourished in the
Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Artists such
as Steen capitalised on the demand from the rising
wealthy middle classes for pictures to decorate their
homes. He painted mainly genre scenes of everyday
life, depicting men and women in taverns, at home, or
at work. Steen is known for his affectionate and lifelike
depictions of children, and the three in the centre of
this painting are the artist’s own: Catherina, Cornelis
and Johannes. JD
Les Tours de Cartes
(Card Tricks), c.1735
—
This picture is one of a series of paintings by Chardin
that focuses on the theme of card playing. Card games
in art often alluded to notions of idleness, trickery,
vanity and vice. In this painting a worldly young man
wearing a tricorne hat baffles the two children with
a cunning card trick, evidently identifying the cards
he holds up (the card face being turned away from
him). The naïve young girl, who timidly places her
hands on the table ledge, concentrates on the cards
displayed on the table, while the boy watches the man
intently, aware of the potential for deceit. Due to the
popularity of the subject matter, a print was later made
of this painting. Engraved in reverse by P. L. Surugue
in 1744, the appended caption on the print reads:
‘You are beguiled, helpless youth, by these tricks you
cannot take your eyes off; When you grow up, guard
your heart from a thousand other tricks’. The weighty
moral tone of this verse, for the benefit of children,
would have made for a more desirable and, thereby,
more profitable print. Chardin’s use of rich colour
and texture, seen here in the young man’s warm grey
coat and the rich hues of the Turkish rug tablecloth,
established him as a skilled colourist.
—
Jean-Siméon Chardin attended the prestigious
Académie Royale in Paris in 1728, specialising in stilllife and genre painting, both of which were in vogue
in eighteenth-century France. His carefully balanced
compositions, notable for their sense of self-contained
stillness and soft diffusion of light, display his skill
at recording the look and feel of ordinary objects.
Chardin’s intimate depictions of children, which
portray them playing with cards, bubbles, spinningtops or shuttlecocks, avoid sentimentality. Such scenes,
with their allusions to the transient nature of childhood
and human life, were derived from sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish vanitas
paintings. Ultimately, these celebrated works convey a
delight in childhood for its own sake. NMN
21
Portrait of the Mackinen
Children, 1747
Elizabeth (1730–80) and William Mackinen (1733–
1809), aged seventeen and fourteen years respectively,
were the children of a Scottish sugar plantation owner
who lived on the island of Antigua in the West Indies.
Dressed like adults, which was the fashion of the period,
and set against a formal architectural background, the
siblings appear younger than their years. The portrait
was painted in 1747, presumably at a time when the
children were in England for their education. It was
customary for wealthy English families living abroad
to send their children home to acquire an education
and a level of sophistication. The children’s elegant
appearance reflects their privileged position in society,
while their graceful poses add something of a French
air of refinement to this picture. Hogarth’s inclusion
of the book and sea shells suggests that these children
are engaged in serious pursuits, such as reading and
natural history, although the shells may be an allusion
to their island home. However, their attention has
been arrested by a butterfly that has settled on a potted
sunflower. Hogarth’s portrait conveys the innocence of
childhood, which will shortly give way to the cares of
adult life. It is also a reminder of the brevity of youth
and the impermanence of beauty. The butterfly, itself
an emblem of transient beauty, will fly away and the
sunflower will wither and die.
—
Bequeathed by Sir Hugh Lane, 1918. NGI.791
22
—
William Hogarth was born in London. He enrolled
in St Martin’s Lane Academy in 1720, an art school
which he later took over. His series of paintings
satirising contemporary customs, notably A Harlot’s
Progress and A Rake’s Progress, were hugely popular. The
audience for his work grew with the publication of his
engraved series after these ‘modern moral subjects’.
As his prints were heavily pirated by unscrupulous
print sellers, he lobbied in parliament for greater legal
control over the reproduction of his and other artists’
work. The Engravers’ Copyright Act (widely known as
‘Hogarth’s Act’), became law in 1735. Hogarth devoted
over twenty-five years of his life to London’s foundling
hospital (founded in 1741), England’s first home for
abandoned children. NMN
The Cottage Girl,
1785
This is considered to be one of Gainsborough’s finest
works, and is known as a ‘fancy painting’, meaning the
subject matter is imagined or fanciful. The painting
depicts a child in ragged clothes standing by a stream
holding a dog under one arm and a jug with a cracked
spout in the other hand. It is not a portrayal of a
well-known child, and was not intended as a portrait.
There has been some argument in recent years as to
the identity of the child. It is possible that the model
was a boy, Jack Hill, who is known to have posed for
Gainsborough. A contemporary account states that
Gainsborough met a girl carrying her dog on Richmond
Hill, and used her as the model for this painting. The
child is not shown with childish accoutrements and,
despite her youth, bears responsibility for looking after
the dog and collecting water for her family. In creating
an image of a poor child, Gainsborough may have
intended to arouse the sympathy of the viewer, while
avoiding any discomfiture about her situation.
—
Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88),
Oil on canvas, 174 x 124.5 cm.
Presented by Sir Alfred and Lady Beit, 1987.
NGI.4529
—
Thomas Gainsborough is one of Britain’s bestloved and most successful artists. His portraits of high
society are perennially popular and he is recognised
as an originator of the eighteenth-century British
landscape school. The son of a weaver, he was born
in Sudbury in Suffolk. Showing an early talent for
painting, he was sent to London to train at St Martin’s
Academy, and later opened his own studio at the age
of eighteen. He was one of the earliest members of
the Society of Artists, later the Royal Society of Arts,
and in 1769 became a founder member of the Royal
Academy. Gainsborough, who was a modern artist
employing new styles and techniques in his work,
was also influenced by the great masters, particularly
van Dyck, Rubens, Murillo and Titian. Many of
Gainsborough’s portraits were set outdoors to enable
him to indulge his passion for painting his subjects in
a landscape setting. JD
23
Portrait of Master
Lewis Farley Johnston,
1779
This skilfully painted oval portrait depicts an O’Brien
kinsman, Master Lewis Farley Johnston, who later
became a judge on the island of Trinidad. It has
been signed and dated HP 1779, which makes it a
rare example of work from Pelham’s time in Ireland.
Delicately executed in watercolour, the artist captures
the boy’s youthful appearance. The various textures of
hair, lace and skin have all been meticulously rendered.
Portrait miniatures functioned principally as portable
likenesses of loved ones. The sentimental or emotional
qualities attached to these objects were integral to the
whole process of commissioning, gifting and wearing
them. This portrait miniature, housed in a simple gold
bracelet setting, was probably commissioned by one of
the child’s close family members and either worn as an
object of affection or personal memento.
—
Henry Pelham (1749–1806),
Watercolour on ivory miniature, 4.7 x 3.8 cm.
Bequeathed in 2004. NGI.19615
24
—
Henry Pelham was born in Boston. He was the son
of a mezzotint engraver, Peter Pelham (1697–1751),
and his third wife, Mary Singleton Copley. His halfbrother was John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), the
distinguished American artist, who taught Henry the
art of miniature painting. Due to the political unrest
that preceded the Declaration of Independence,
Pelham decided to leave Boston in 1776, following
Copley to London, where he exhibited miniatures
at the Royal Academy. Around 1778 he visited
his maternal relatives in County Clare, who were
established members of the Irish landed gentry. From
this time he seems to have based himself in Ireland
painting miniature portraits of people connected with
the O’Brien’s, Barons Inchiquin, of Dromoland Castle.
Pelham also worked as a cartographer and provided
views of notable abbeys around County Clare, which
later appeared in Francis Grose’s Antiquities of Ireland
(1793–94). In later life he worked as a civil engineer
in counties Cork and Kerry, overseeing the building
of protective fortifications along the coast as a defence
against a potential Napoleonic invasion. In 1806, while
supervising the erection of a tower he had designed,
he drowned when his boat overturned in the Kenmare
River. NMN
Julie Bonaparte as Queen of Spain with
her Daughters, Zénaïde and Charlotte,
1808–09
Marie-Julie Clary was the daughter of a wealthy Marseilles
merchant, possibly of Irish descent. Her husband
was Napoleon’s older brother, Joseph Bonaparte. This
portrait shows Julie Bonaparte as Queen of Spain,
flanked by her daughters. Eight-year-old Zénaïde on
the left is brown-eyed like her mother and has her
hand tucked into her arm. On the right is blue-eyed
Charlotte, aged seven, holding her mother’s hand. The
portrait depicts the tenderness between the children and
their mother, but was also intended to show viewers that
the next generation was strong and healthy. The family
would have sought strategic marriages. Thus, Zénaïde
married her cousin Prince Charles-Lucien Bonaparte,
while Charlotte married another cousin, Napoleon
Louis, brother of Napoleon III.
The emphasis in this work is on the expert painting of
the costumes, including the Queen’s satin and velvet
dress and the girls’ pale pink satin dresses with voile
over-dresses. The clothes indicate that they are for
leisure and not for work. The painted floor, canopy
outside the window, and the punts moored on the
lake suggest that, in keeping with an informal family
pose, they may be seated in an Orangery rather than a
formal salon.
—
Baron François Pascal Simon Gérard
(1770–1837),
Oil on canvas, 200 x 143.5 cm.
Purchased in 1972 (Shaw Fund). NGI.4055
—
Baron Gérard was born in Rome to a French father
and Italian mother. He studied in Paris in the studio
of Jacques-Louis David, and it is said that he was
David’s favourite pupil. In his early career, he worked
as an illustrator and painter, but achieved success as
a portrait and history painter in the Neoclassical
manner, after depicting some of Napoleon’s victories
in battle. By 1800 he had become famous for painting
society portraits, and his greatest patron was Emperor
Napoleon. Politically flexible, he survived the fall of
Napoleon and became court painter to the Bourbon
King Louis XVIII, who made Gérard a Baron of the
Empire in 1809. JD
25
The Gleaners, 1854
—
Jules Adolphe Aimé Louis Breton (1827–1906),
Presented by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, 1950.
NGI.4213
This painting, titled The Gleaners, refers to those who
collected the remnants of wheat after it had been cut,
and were considered the poorest of the rural poor. At
the time it was painted, the rights of gleaners were being
debated in the French Senate, and certain rules and
regulations were introduced. Among other conditions,
gleaning was only permitted after the harvest was
completed, it had to take place during daylight hours,
and able-bodied men were not permitted to participate.
This scene takes place on a hot afternoon. While
gleaning was an arduous task, Breton has painted his
subjects with great dignity and a sense of calm. At least
four children can be identified in the painting, and
their role was to help the women gather the wheat. The
pipe-smoking, garde-champêtre (field-guard) watches
over them. His Napoleonic hat, sword and armband
indicate that he is a war veteran. Although children of
this social class may have informally attended school,
it was expected that they would assist their families
working on the land for the duration of the harvest.
26
—
Jules Breton was born in the village of Courrières
near Lille in northern France. The village often features
in his work, and its unusual tapering church tower
is visible in the background of The Gleaners. Breton
studied painting at the Royal Academy in Ghent,
Belgium, and practiced for a time in Antwerp. He
then trained in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, later
describing the isolation he felt in the city. He regularly
submitted work for exhibition at the Salon, including
The Gleaners in 1855, for which he was awarded a thirdclass medal. He continued to paint scenes of rural life
throughout his career, and his paintings highlighted
the beauty and harmony of nature. He was interested
in depicting the lower classes, presenting them in a
form of tempered realism that both softened the harsh
realities of life and did not offend the sensibilities of
potential buyers or the official authorities. JD
Boy Eating Cherries,
1895
This painting shows Bonnard’s mother, Elizabeth
Merzdorf, looking on as her three-year-old grandchild,
Jean, eats fresh cherries. Jean was the first child of
Bonnard’s sister Andrée. Bonnard made this sketch,
known in French as a croquis, at his parents’ home
of Le Clos at Le Grand-Temps in south-east France.
The artist often painted the same scenes, and he had
painted this particular subject the previous year. In
the 1894 painting, the woman is spoon-feeding the
child; however, by 1895 he is feeding himself. Thus,
in the space of a year, he has changed from toddler
to little boy, capable of feeding himself cherries under
the watchful eye of his grandmother, and he could
be relied upon not to eat, or choke on, the stones of
the fruit. Bonnard was very interested in pattern and
decoration. Here, he focuses on the strong patterns
of the boy’s checked shirt, and of the blue and white
ceramic dish. The floral wallpaper in the background
adds yet another variation of pattern, and hints at the
outdoors beyond the walls.
—
Pierre Bonnard (1867–1947),
Oil on board, 52 x 41 cm.
Presented in 1982. NGI.4356
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2014.
—
Pierre Bonnard first studied law at university and
practiced briefly as a barrister. While studying in Paris,
he also attended evening art classes at the École des
Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian. He gave up law
to become a full-time artist. Bonnard was a member
of the artistic group the ‘Nabis’ (from the Hebrew,
‘Prophets’) led by Paul Sérusier, including the artists
Édouard Vuillard and Maurice Denis. They were
influenced by the art of Paul Gauguin, particularly
his use of strong colour and pattern, and by Japanese
prints. Bonnard was also inspired by the art of the
Impressionists, though his later work used more intense
colour. He explored the use of the cropped-image
style, imitating the relatively new art of photography.
His work is often described as intimiste in style, and
he painted many domestic interior scenes featuring
members of his own family. JD
27
The Dolls’ School,
1900
—
Watercolour and pastel on paper, 45.2 x 59.5 cm.
This charming watercolour gives the viewer a glimpse
into the innocent world of childhood play and
imagination. It was painted in 1900, only a few years
before the artist’s premature death from pneumonia,
aged forty-three. The child is believed to be Osborne’s
niece, Violet Stockley, who appeared in a number of
his other compositions. He captures with sensitivity
and affection the little girl’s sheer absorption in her
private game of make-believe. Crouched on her bed
she plays teacher to her neatly assembled dolls. With
her finger pointed, she looks to be either instructing
or reprimanding them. Light from an unseen window
illuminates the young girl and the array of dolls, which
includes a brightly coloured clown and a Chinese doll.
Her bedroom, dress and numerous toys all suggest
that she is from a comfortable, modestly affluent
home. Osborne achieves a sense of informality and
spontaneity in this scene through the use of loose
‘impressionistic’ brushwork, together with deft colour
and light effects. In 1903, under the title Play, this work
28
formed part of the memorial exhibition in Osborne’s
honour held at the Royal Hibernian Academy.
—
Walter Osborne received his initial training at the
Royal Hibernian Academy Schools in Dublin from
1876. He continued his studies at the Académie Royale
des Beaux-Arts in Antwerp between 1881 and 1882
under Charles Verlat (1824–1890). Travelling to the
artists’ colonies in Brittany for a brief period in 1882–
83, he worked at Dinan, Pont-Aven and Quimperlé. In
1884 he moved to England, where he produced similar
rural scenes to those he had painted on the Continent.
On his return to Dublin in the 1890s, he chiefly earned
his living as a successful portraitist. His society portraits
were greatly admired; however, his intimate scenes of
everyday life, which often depict children in domestic
settings, were equally celebrated. During his short
career he created some of Ireland’s best-loved works, all
of which reflect his lively awareness of contemporary
artistic trends. NMN
Girl with a Red Ribbon,
1908
—
Gabriele Münter (1877–1962),
Oil on board, 40.7 x 32.8 cm.
© DACS 2014
This portrait was painted by Gabriele Münter during
a visit to the Bavarian village of Murnau. It is one of a
series of small studies of women and children painted
between 1908 and 1911. The strong colouring is similar
to that used by the Fauves, a group of artists which
Münter had admired in Paris. The Fauves, notably Henri
Matisse (1869–1954) and André Derain (1880–1954),
favoured a spontaneous, often subjective response to
nature, which they expressed in bold brushstrokes and
high-keyed colours applied directly from the tube. The
dark outlines visible in the background of this picture
are reminiscent of Bavarian glass painting. In Murnau,
Münter collected traditional religious icons and glass
paintings, and started to experiment with Bavarian
glass-painting techniques. Deep in thought, the young
girl’s furrowed brow and sidelong gaze convey a sense of
melancholy. Using clashing colours, Münter marks the
different angles of the sitter’s face, thereby contributing
to a mask-like appearance, while the use of an acidic
green pigment heightens the girl’s unusual pallor. This
naïve-looking child is more than likely a local girl,
dressed in a traditional peasant blouse with a vibrant
red ribbon in her hair. Her face can be viewed in the
context of Münter’s exploration of different artistic
styles, ranging from German folk art to the work of
the Parisian avant-garde.
—
Gabriele Münter was born in Berlin, Germany.
She attended Munich’s progressive new Phalanx
School in 1902, where she began a long professional
and personal relationship with the school’s director,
Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), the Russian painter
and art theorist. They settled in the Bavarian village
of Murnau, where Münter bought a house in 1909.
In 1911, together with Kandinsky, Franz Marc (1880–
1916) and others, she formed Der Blaue Reiter (The
Blue Rider), a group of artists known as the German
Expressionists who sought to promote modern art.
They believed in the connection between visual art
and music, the spiritual and symbolic associations
of colour, along with an expressive and instinctive
approach to painting. NMN
29
A Girl Asleep,
c.1925–30
—
Dod Procter (1892–1972),
Presented by Sir Alfred Chester Beatty, 1954. NGI.1294
© Bridgeman Images 2014
30
Procter does not include unnecessary details in this
image of a young girl sleeping soundly. Instead, she
focuses on the head and arms of the model, which
takes up the majority of the composition. Her right
arm encircles the large soft pillow, while her left arm
folds under her head. The painting conveys a sense of
quiet comfort, stillness and calm, evident in the girl’s
peaceful expression and emphasised by the use of white
and muted tones of grey. A variation of this theme is
seen in Morning, 1926 (Tate Collection), a sensuous
yet sombre work, showing a young woman reclining
on a bed asleep with her right hand beneath her head.
The model in the Tate painting was Cissie Barnes, the
sixteen-year-old daughter of a fisherman from Newlyn,
the Cornish village that was home to Procter for most
of her career. Barnes supposedly posed almost every
day for five weeks for that painting, and is known to
have modelled for numerous other works by the artist.
Both the subject matter and the colouring of these
two paintings are strikingly similar, as are the qualities
of volume and mass in the figure, all hallmarks of
Proctor’s style.
—
Doris (‘Dod’) Proctor, née Shaw, was born in
London. She studied at Stanhope Forbes’s art school
in the Cornish village of Newlyn, where she met her
future husband, Ernest Procter (1886–1935), and later
attended the Atelier Colarossi in Paris. Around 1922 she
began to paint a series of simple, monumental studies
of young women she knew, shown either nude or in
softly draped clothes. Skillfully modelled with light
and shade, the single figures in these pictures have a
powerful sense of volume and presence. Ernest Procter
died suddenly in Newcastle in 1935. After a period of
travelling, Dod returned to west Cornwall in 1938,
where she lived until her death. The style of her later
works changed considerably, as did the subject matter,
which included landscapes, still-lifes and depictions of
children. NMN
A Family, 1951
—
Oil on canvas, 147 x 185 cm. Heritage gift by
Lochlann and Brenda Quinn, 2002. NGI.4709
© Estate of Louis le Brocquy
Despite the title, the three nude figures presented in
this painting do not appear to be a family, but rather
three isolated individuals set in a claustrophobic
space. The mother, propped on her elbow, lies on a
bed-like structure with a white cat at her hip, while
the father poses at the end of the bed his head bowed
despondently. The child, holding a small bunch of
flowers in its hand, looks towards the mother with
an expectant gaze, touching her foot. This work was
painted in London in 1951, at a time when the world
was reeling in the aftermath of the Second World
War, and as the threat of nuclear war loomed. The
United Kingdom and Europe were crowded with
refugees and displaced people, just as many men
who had served in the armed forces returned with
psychological problems. This post-war child cannot
comprehend its parents’ overwhelming sense of loss
and melancholy. Within this stark interior scene, the
child provides a symbol of hope, represented by a
simple bunch of flowers, the only hint of colour in an
otherwise monochromatic painting.
—
Louis le Brocquy was raised in Dublin, and moved
to London in 1946, followed by France, building up
a successful international career. Until his death, aged
ninety-six in 2012, he was considered Ireland’s most
distinguished living artist. In 1956 le Brocquy was
selected to represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale,
where A Family was awarded the prestigious Prealpina
award. During his career, the artist produced several
series of works, including the ‘Head’ series, for which
he is most well-known, together with creating tapestries
and book illustrations. Influenced by contemporary
European and international art, in addition to the
great masters, le Brocquy acknowledged that the
monumental reclining nudes of Titian, Velázquez,
Goya and Manet formed the basis for the mother’s
pose in A Family. JD
31
Suggestions for
Further Reading
Arts in Education Charter, Department of Arts,
Heritage and the Gaeltacht and Department of
Education and Skills. Dublin 2012
Ariès, P., Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of
Family Life. London, 1965
Barnard, T. C., Improving Ireland? Projectors, Prophets
and Profiteers 1641–1786. Dublin, 2008
Bourke, M., The Story of Irish Museums 1790-2000.
Cork, 2011, second printing 2013 (See chapters 2,5)
Bourke, M. (Ed.), Museums, Galleries and Young
People. Symposium Proceedings, National Gallery of
Ireland, Dublin, 2006
Crookshank, A., and the Knight of Glin, Ireland’s
Painters 1600–1940. New Haven, 2002
Cunningham, H., Children and Childhood in Western
Society since 1500. London, 1995
Davis, C. (Ed.), National Gallery of Ireland Essential
Guide. Dublin, 2008
Denisoff, D. (Ed.), The Nineteenth-century Child and
Consumer Culture. Aldershot, 2008
Dunlevy, M., Dress in Ireland, A History. Cork, 1999
Dunne, J., and Kelly, J. (Eds.), Childhood and its
Discontents. Dublin, 2002
Fletcher, A., Growing up in England, The Experience of
Childhood, 1600–1914. New Haven, 2008
Frost, J. L., A History of Children’s Play and Play
Environments: Toward a Contemporary Child-saving
Movement. New York, 2010
32
Gillespie, R., and Kennedy, B. (Eds.), Art into History.
Dublin, 1994
Pollock, L. A., A Lasting Relationship: Parents and
Children over Three Centuries. London, 1987
Heywood, C., A History of Childhood, Children and
Childhood in the West from Medieval to Modern Times.
Cambridge, 2007
Prunty, J., Dublin Slums 1800–1925, A Study in Urban
Geography. Dublin, 2000
Hilton, M., Styles, M., and Watson, V. (Eds.),
Opening the Nursery Door, Reading, Writing and
Childhood 1600–1900. London, 1997
Holdsworth, S., and Crossley, J., Innocence and
Experience – Images of Children in British Art from 1600
to the Present. Manchester City Art Galleries, 1992
Kevill-Davies, S., Yesterday’s Children, The Antiques
and History of Childcare. Woodbridge, 1994
Le Harivel, A. (Ed.), Taking Stock: Acquisitions
2000–2010. National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2010
Lenox-Conyngham, M. (Ed.), Diaries of Ireland,
An Anthology 1590–1987. Dublin, 1998
Locke, J., Some Thoughts Concerning Education.
Dublin, 1728
Milne, K., The Irish Charter Schools 1730–1830.
Dublin, 1997
Neumeister, M., The Changing Face of Children’s
Portraits and their Influence in Europe. Dulwich
Picture Gallery, Dumont, 2007
O’Dowd, M., A History of Women in Ireland 1500–
1800. Harlow, 2005
Pugh, G., London’s Forgotten Children: Thomas Coram
and the Foundling Hospital. Stroud, 2007
Robbins, J., The Lost Children, A Study of Charity
Children in Ireland, 1700–1900. Dublin, 1980
Rousseau, J.-J., Émile. Geneva, 1762
Vickery, A., Behind Closed Doors: At Home in
Georgian England. London, 2009
Wilson, D., Women, Marriage and Property in Wealthy
Landed Families in Ireland, 1750–1850. Manchester, 2009
—
NGI Publications available as online pdfs @
www.nationalgallery.ie/learning
Bourke, M., Impressionism at the National Gallery
of Ireland. Dublin 2013
Bourke, M., and Edmondson, S., Irish Artists Painting
in France 1860–1910 at the NGI. National Gallery of
Ireland. Dublin 2013
Bourke, M., with contributions by S. Edmondson
and D. Maguire, West of Ireland Paintings at the
National Gallery of Ireland 1800–2000. Dublin 2014
33
GUIDELINES
for Teachers
Richard Thomas Moynan (1856 –1906),
‘Military Manoeuvres’, 1891. p12
Sarah Edmondson
Exploring Childhood at the National Gallery of Ireland
1570-1950. See also pdf @ www.nationalgallery.ie/
learning. This book explores the face of childhood
in the National Gallery of Ireland. It provides many
opportunities for new ways of learning, of looking
and responding to the paintings, engaging in artmaking, and making links and connections with
the curriculum. Since the publication of The Arts in
Education Charter (Departments of Arts, Heritage
and the Gaeltacht, and Education and Skills, 2012) we
look forward to seeing schools visiting the National
Gallery of Ireland on guided tours each year.
For bookings contact: [email protected]
—
Primary School: Teachers know that the Primary
School Visual Arts Curriculum encourages the use of
appropriate visual vocabulary, which is best achieved
by looking and reacting to works of art. This book ties
in with primary school ‘looking and responding’, e.g.
looking at artworks encourages students of all levels of
ability (because they don’t need to read to understand
paintings) just as responding to an image provides an
opportunity to develop language skills. Teachers could
ask them to describe what they see and help them with
suitable words (under ‘art terms’). Encourage them to
name colours (yellow), describe them (bright), identify
where objects are situated in the picture (the girl is at
the back on the right), gradually introducing concepts,
such as perspective, light and shadow. As art-making is
increasing in a museum and gallery context, encourage
the students to respond through art-making. The
curricular links and projects assist students to make
imaginative connections and to express their ideas
and feelings in drawing, painting, constructing and
inventing. This helps them to assimilate and respond
to experience and to make sense of it. Use the images
to talk about the scale, technique and paint texture
of works of art. Explain that an original painting is
unique and precious. Visit the National Gallery of
Ireland on a pre-booked Discovery Tour.
34
The Primary School Visual Arts Curriculum draws
relationships between making, looking at and
responding to art, and suggests six areas by which
children can interpret the world: drawing, paint and
colour, print, clay, construction, fabric and fibre. These
can be used for discussion, to make cross-curricular
links, and to try out the projects with each age group.
—
Applicable to all levels of Teaching
In the teaching of History consider:
– The year of the creation of one of the paintings.
Plot the date on a timeline.
–Discuss key events in national, European or
international history around the date of the artwork
and make links between these events and the theme
of the painting.
– Note the type and nature of the work/activity
depicted in the painting.
– Discuss the figures and clothing and if it has
changed over time?
– What are the main modes of transport in one of the
works?
– Discuss one of the landscapes depicted – what are
its main features? Is it urban or rural, and how
might that landscape have changed or stayed the
same over time?
– Make deductions regarding the children, the people
and the society in which they lived. Ask questions –
why, what if, and how do we know?
– Create a close-up drawing of one or two of the
children in a painting.
–Discuss the settings, the buildings and their
features, and how they might have changed?
– Paint or draw a scene from Irish history during the
nineteenth century.
– Write a letter to a person in the painting from the
perspective of a character in nineteenth-century
Ireland, telling them about your life. Interview the
person, asking them to tell you about life in their
country at that time.
The Village School, 1665. p20
Thomas Gainsborough
The Cottage Girl, 1785. p23
Integrate geography and the visual arts by drawing on
mapping skills using these points:
– Find a country e.g. France, and/or the region in the
painting on a map.
– Discuss the relative locations of two places and the
distances between them, e.g. Ireland/France.
– Use political maps to name the regional and
national centres in the country.
– Use maps to locate and name the main geographical
features marking main cities.
– Discuss bordering countries and the influences they
have on a country.
Encourage interaction between music, drama and the
visual arts:
– In drama, look at activities that involve basing a
role-play or improvisation on a scene, or between
two children or characters in a painting.
– Explore a scene in a painting, and use it as a pretext.
Encourage the students to dramatise the imagined
prior scene or next scene. Drama techniques, such
as still-life, thought-tracking and freeze-framing,
could be drawn into this work.
– In music, consider composing activities based on
some of the paintings. Use a range of sound sources
to invent and perform pieces inspired by these works.
—
Junior and Senior Cycle: Junior and Senior Cycle
students (information on Junior Certificate and short
courses is listed further on) can use these images in
support studies for the painting section, using the
information to explain aspects of their work. It is
important that Junior and Senior Cycle art students
visit the National Gallery of Ireland on a pre-booked
Structured Tour and bring drawing materials to sketch
from the paintings. On arrival at the Gallery, ask
the guide to encourage discussion and interaction in
order to understand that paintings involve a world of
people and places, history, real and imagined events,
nature and still-life. Draw comparisons with other
works of art, including those from earlier and more
modern periods. This might involve telling the story
Howard Helmick (1845 –1907),
The Schoolmaster’s Moment of Leisure, c.1888. p11
of an artist’s life or form part of their own research.
Sketching in the Gallery can be used as part of support
studies, projects, cartoons and storyboards.
The Junior Certificate
A Framework for Junior Cycle (2012) includes ‘creativity
and innovation’ amongst eight principles, together with
eight key skills. The learning that students experience
in Junior Cycle is described through twenty-four
statements of learning, which include the need for
students to ‘create, appreciate and critically interpret a
wide range of texts’ and ‘to create and present artistic
work and appreciate the process and skills involved’.
History students study art-related themes, such as the
Renaissance, and are encouraged to use visual stimuli
(including paintings) for historical comprehension
tasks, thus, many of the paintings in this book could
provide useful resource material.
Short Courses
Short courses are concerned with creating, appreciating
and interpreting a range of texts, and making and
presenting artistic work, while understanding the
processes involved. They offer the opportunity of
devising and delivering new ways of learning. The
Framework for Junior Cycle will offer the option of
school-developed art history ‘short courses’ for which
this book is ideal. It can form a mini course, drawing
on other themes, including war, poverty, famine,
education, children’s labour, children’s clothing,
children’s toys, playtime and games, and drawing
cross-curricular links with music, literature, design,
film and the social cultural history of the period.
National Gallery of Ireland downloadable pdfs are
being provided as resources for short courses, which
we hope will connect to the lives and learning of 1215 year olds. Refer to the NCCA for guidelines on
statements of learning, links to key skills (e.g. literacy
and numeracy), learning outcomes, strands, in-school
assessment etc.
Learning aims and outcomes: Use the NGI website to
look at the collections online. Try placing them in a
35
Baron Gérard (1770–1837),
Julie Bonaparte as Queen of Spain with her Daughters,
Zénaïde and Charlotte, 1808–09. p25
The Dolls’ School, 1900. p28
wider art historical context by describing the social
context and comparing and contrasting the works
according to their subject matter and formal qualities.
See these as new ways of learning. The discussion
points and projects address some learning outcomes:
Junior Cycle Short Courses and
Interdisciplinary Projects
– Explain the term ‘miniature painting’ and painting
miniature portraits.
– Describe some of the painting techniques used by
the artists in this book.
– Name a number of artists involved in portrait
painting and its development.
– Discuss the differences (styles, content,
techniques) between works painted in the
nineteenth century and the twentieth century.
– List and describe a number of paintings by artists
that are based on genre subjects of ordinary
life – what are the subjects depicted and what
distinguishes these paintings from the other works
in the book?
– Discuss the differences between miniature
painting, portraits, subject pictures and narrative
painting.
– What is the function and role of portrait
miniatures?
– Discuss the depiction of children illustrated in this
book and what you perceive to be the change in
presentation from the late eighteenth century to
the twentieth century.
– Create an art work inspired by one of the
nineteenth-century paintings in this book.
– Compose a portrait of a child using the art
elements: texture, tone, shape, form, scale and
colour.
– Demonstrate an understanding of perspective
(one-point perspective, overlapping, scale and
colour).
36
Themes
1. ‘The World seen through a Child’s Perspective’
(creative writing and drawing – English and Art)
2. ‘Child Labour’ (raising awareness – poster design
and fundraising – History, CSPE, Business Studies
and Art)
3. ‘The Irish Education System’ (map the changing
education system and find out from the students’
perspective how school life could be improved –
History, Drama and Art)
4. ‘Childcare and Health’ (designing posters for the
classroom or making an informative animation/
documentary – Home Economics, SPHE and Art)
5. ‘Dressed for the Part’ (trace the history of children’s
historic costumes through to contemporary informal
children’s fashions – Art, History and Home
Economics)
6. ‘Youth, Exercise, Diet and Wellbeing’ (explore the
links, connections and problems facing young
people today as their diets and habits have changed –
Art History, History, Home Economics and SPHE)
7. ‘Role and Responsibility’ (by looking at images and
reading about children in the past, decide what
you think the role and responsibility of a child is in
contemporary society – Art, History, English and
CSPE)
—
Transition Year: Images on screens are part of
everyday life – encourage students to articulate their
views about these paintings. Their critical sense can be
developed by asking them to discuss what they see and
avoiding details about artists’ lives, as it has little to do
with the looking experience, introduce points about
the artist when they are exploring why a painting was
made, the source of inspiration, and how the artist
achieved certain effects.
Les Tours de Cartes (Card Tricks), c.1735. p21
This book forms a compact module for theme-work and
as almost all TY students study either Art or History in
the Junior Certificate, they will be familiar with basic
art terms and descriptions. Themes that can be explored
include: the portrayal of children through the ages, the
changing nature of family life, the role of women in
the paintings, the move from formal to more informal
portraits, from painting in the studio or in a more
realistic fashion to the depiction of children’s clothing.
Tailor discussion points and projects. Trace the changing
history of childhood by drawing on the Gallery’s
collection in paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture
and the collection online at www.nationalgallery.ie.
Transition Year is an ideal opportunity to organise a
Guided Tour and workshop exploring the collections
of the National Gallery of Ireland.
—
Leaving Certificate: This publication has links to
the current Leaving Certificate Art History syllabus.
The range of techniques, the subject matter, the
portrait styles and the settings are relevant to Senior
Cycle art education. The introductory essay can be
combined with details of the paintings, the artist’s life
and the social history of the period. History students
can undertake special research studies on the life and
works of artists, especially if they can link the topics
to social and cultural historical themes, such as those
listed in this book. Use the NGI exhibition notes and
Leaving Certificate Art information, and organise a
Structured Visit to the National Gallery of Ireland
to view the original works of art. See information on
NGI collections at www.nationalgallery.ie
—
Discussion Points and Projects for Teachers
Teaching and Schools
1. Analyse Jan Steen’s (1626–79) The Village School,
c.1665, and compare it to your own classroom. Use the
following points as guidelines for comparison: age of
pupils, teacher’s dress code, type of punishment used,
schoolroom furniture, pupils’ uniforms, and materials
and learning aids in the room. Do you think that
classrooms and schools today are better equipped to
teach than they used to be in the seventeenth century?
Why?
2. Does all learning happen in school or can you think
of something valuable you learned outside of the
classroom? In Hugh Douglas Hamilton’s painting of
Bishop Frederick Hervey and his granddaughter, c.1790,
they are depicted together in Rome. Do children always
learn from adults or do you think adults sometimes
learn from children? Give an example?
3. Consider the title of this painting by the artist Howard
Helmick (1845–1907), The Schoolmaster’s Moment of
Leisure, c.1888. Do you think this teacher enjoys his
job? Why is there only one pupil in the room? Where is
the rest of the class? What is the teacher doing?
Project: Make a drawing or painting of your classroom
from your seat. Include the furniture, your books and your
fellow students busy drawing! Hang the pictures up and
compare and contrast them.
Work or Play
1. In Richard Thomas Moynan’s (1856–1906) painting,
‘Military Manoeuvres’, 1891, are the children working
or playing? Are they in a real band?
2. What is the child doing in Thomas Gainsborough’s
(1727–88) The Cottage Girl, 1785? Is she happy or
sad? Did she walk a long distance in her bare feet?
Do you think it is fair that she must collect water
for her parents? Have a discussion in class about the
lack of fresh water in underdeveloped countries and
the role of children living in these circumstances.
Ask your students if they do any work at home to
help their parents or younger siblings.
Project: Design a poster to make the school aware of
the harsh living conditions experienced by children in
underdeveloped countries highlighting ways in which
they can help.
37
Portrait of the Mackinen Children, 1747. p22
The City and Country
1. Is growing up in the countryside different to
growing up in the city? If so, what is different about
it? To help, compare and contrast the activities of
the children in Richard Thomas Moynan’s (1856–
1906) ‘Military Manoeuvres’, 1891, with those in
Jules Breton’s (1827–1906), The Gleaners, 1854.
Project: Write and illustrate a short story about an
adventure to the city or the countryside. Use descriptive
language in order to give the reader a real sense of the place
you are visiting. Don’t just describe what you can see, also
describe the different smells, good and bad, and the noises.
Dressing Up
1. Use some of the paintings as a starting point in
order to discuss what is meant by ‘age appropriate
clothes’. For example, are the clothes worn by the
children in William Hogarth’s (1697–64) Portrait of
the Mackinen Children, 1747, suitable for playing in
the garden? Is it common for a mother and daughter
to wear matching dresses like Stephen Slaughter’s
(1697–1765) Lady and Child, 1745? Can you think
of any contemporary examples of inappropriate
attire on children or teenagers?
2. Compare and contrast contemporary clothes with
those worn by men, women and children in the
sixteenth, seventeenth, or eighteenth centuries. Do
men and women wear the same clothes? What kind
of fabric is used in the clothing? Are certain clothes
more masculine and others more feminine? Has
this changed over the centuries?
3. Do you agree that the clothes worn by a character in a
painting tell us how rich or poor that person is? Choose
two paintings from the text that demonstrate this.
4. The children in Jan Steen’s (1626–79) The Village
School, c.1665, are not wearing a school uniform. What
do you think the purpose of a school uniform is?
Project: Design a school uniform based on the needs and
activities of the students wearing it. Consider the pros and
cons of a uniform when designing it.
38
Stephen Slaughter (1697–1765),
A Lady and Child, c.1745. p6
Playtime
Select from the following works and use them to discuss
what is meant by ‘playtime’:
– William Mulready’s The Toy Seller, 1857–63
– Baron Gérard’s Julie Bonaparte as Queen of Spain with
her Daughters, Zénaïde and Charlotte,
1808–09
– Jean-Siméon Chardin’s Les Tours de Cartes, c.1735
– William Hogarth’s Portrait of the Mackinen
Children, 1747
– Walter Osborne’s The Dolls’ School, 1900
How is playtime for children in the twenty-first century
different from previous centuries? Have children’s toys
changed or developed? Why have they changed? Are toys
or playtime activities different for boys and girls?
Project: Discuss ‘educative/learning toys’ and design a new
learning toy for either a boy or a girl. What is the toy going
to teach, how will it teach the child, and what age is it
suitable for?
Childhood and Class Distinction
What do you know about childhood experiences
of the past? Select several paintings to explore these
experiences and discuss this subject.
What evidence can you draw upon as examples of what
children did in the past? Name some of the objects of
childhood? Does history tell us much about childhood,
mothers, fathers, children and family life? Who wrote
the history books where we can find this information?
Are these particular stories missing from history –
why? Do we know much about the lives of the poorer
disadvantaged children and families, and if so, why?
What is the material evidence of their past? Does this
evidence of childhood also come from the middle and
upper classes? Why?
Augustus Nicholas Burke (c.1838–1891),
A Connemara Girl. p14
Samuel McCloy (1831–1904),
Daydreams. p13
Do the activities of the children tell you what class
they belong to? What other clues might shed some
light on their class? Compare the girl(s) in Augustus
Nicholas Burke’s (c. 1838–91) A Connemara Girl with
Samuel McCloy’s (1831–1904) Daydreams.
Childhood in Ireland
Does the history of childhood in Ireland tell us
anything about our heritage or how we value culture?
Do the paintings show the importance of children in
the Irish family or in Irish life?
Adults and Children
Can paintings tell us anything about the changing
world of the mother and child? Is there any distinction
between adulthood and childhood in these paintings?
How and when does this distinction come about – can
you give some examples from the paintings?
Is there any distinction between the paintings
illustrating Irish and European children in this book?
Give examples showing the distinctions. What are
the differences? Does Irish history and the history of
childhood in Ireland explain these differences? Compare
and contrast two works by an Irish and a European
painter and explain their different approaches.
Compare and contrast the relationship between
mother and child in the paintings: Pierre Bonnard,
Boy Eating Cherries, 1895 and Stephen Slaughter, A
Lady and Child, 1745. What is the difference between
the families depicted in these paintings: Elizabeth Still
Stanhope, Countess of Harrington, Wheelbarrow with
six of the Artist’s Children, c.1850; Adam Buck, Portrait
of the Edgeworth Family, 1787; and Louis le Brocquy, A
Family, 1951?
Project: What is the value and role of the objects and
paintings relating to childhood collected in museums?
How would you go about planning and organising an
exhibition based on the theme ‘childhood’? What objects
or images would you collect? How would you display
them? Draw a map/aerial view/plan of the exhibition
and/or design an exhibition brochure or poster.
Key words: Chronologically / Thematically / Plinths /
Glass display cabinets / Labels / Eye level
Portraits of Children
How does a portrait of a child differ from that of an
adult? What are the characteristics of a portrait of a child
(naïvety, innocence, curiosity, gentleness, excitement)?
Find two examples from the paintings in the book that
demonstrate these characteristics.
Why do you think parents pay artists to have portraits of
their children painted? Discuss the development of this
phenomenon in the twenty-first century? What is the
common medium used to take and share images during
this century?
Henry Pelham’s Portrait of Master Lewis Farley Johnston,
1779, is a miniature portrait. Discuss the function of a
miniature in relation to the question above.
Visual Literacy and Art Terms
Visual literacy is learning how to read a painting. It is
trying to figure out what the painting is about, or what
the artist is trying to say, by solely looking at the painting
or object. Being able to talk about art is an important
part of both active learning and the enjoyment of art.
This material is also helpful in the development of
students’ general literacy skills, just as concepts like
scale, size, perspective, proportion etc., can be used in
support of artistic numeracy.
39
A Family, 1951. p31
Visual Literacy Art Terms: Use these words
to help you discuss/describe works of art.
youthful model/pose
features emotion
impression portrait
poverty sculpture
fatherly colour
decorative imagination
anatomy context
moodplayful
skill drawing/design
hard/soft atmosphere
painterly likeness
expression canvas
evocative maternal
natural/artificial
realistic
collage portray
style/stylisation shadow/shading
movement illustrator
silhouette technique
familypigment
balance define
sketch innocence
rhythm texture
patternvolume
line/linear composition
crosshatching
fresh
horizon cold/cool
restful colours authentic
unrealistic primitive
loose/free pastels
primary image
light/highlight allude/suggest
define/outline still-life
graphic art
shape/form
warm/hot colours
naive
childishtight/controlled
40
Literacy Questions
– What is happening in the painting?
– How many people are depicted?
– Are the characters interacting with each other?
– Are they rich or poor? How do you know?
– Where is the painting set?
– Is there a narrative?
– What colours have been used?
– What mood has been created?
– Is it a warm or cold painting?
– Does it make you feel happy or sad?
– Why was it painted, or who was it painted for?
– Who painted it? What style is it in?
Two examples:
1. Louis le Brocquy (1916–2012), A Family, 1951
– How many people are in this painting?
– Are they related?
– Are they interacting with each other?
– What colours have been used in this painting?
– What mood has been created?
– Where are these people?
– Do you think they are happy or sad? Why?
– Are they feeling warm or cold?
– What do you think happened to these people?
– What do you think this painting is about?
2. Richard Thomas Moynan (1856–1906), ‘Military
Manoeuvres’, 1891
– Are the boys on the street in a real band or part of
a real parade?
– Are they rich or poor?
– What kind of clothes are they wearing?
– Can you find any wealthy people in this painting?
– What are the wealthy people wearing?
– Is there anybody wearing a uniform?
– What country is this painting set in?
– Are there any adults in this painting?
– Do the children and the adults respect each other?
– Are the boys behaving?
– Can you imagine what the next scene would look like?
– What do you think this painting is about?
Acknowledgements
Guidelines for Teachers:
Sarah Edmondson
National Gallery of Ireland:
Lydia Furlong, Roy Hewson, Anne Hodge,
Valerie Keogh, Andrew Moore, Marie McFeely,
Adrian Le Harivel, Janet McLean, Orla O’Brien,
Caoilte O Mahony, Sean Rainbird, Brendan Rooney,
and Adriaan Waiboer. NGI Digital Media Services:
Andrea Lydon and Catherine Ryan
Readers:
Caroline Bond, Julie Daunt and Michelle
MacDonagh
The Department of Arts,
Heritage and the Gaeltacht
The Department of Education and Skills
In association with Matheson
Published in 2014 by:
The National Gallery of Ireland
Merrion Square West
Dublin 2
Ireland
Text Copyright © Gaye Ashford, Joanne Drum,
Sarah Edmondson, Niamh MacNally and the
National Gallery of Ireland, 2014
All photos © National Gallery of Ireland
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the National Gallery
of Ireland.
ISBN 978-1-90428853-4
Designer: Origin.ie
Editor: Marie Bourke
Copy editor: Penny Iremonger
Printed in Ireland by:
Photo © National Gallery of Ireland
—
Front Cover: Richard Moynan (1856–1906),
‘Military Manoeuvres’, 1891 (NGI.4363)
Inside Front Cover: Walter Osborne (1859–1903),
The Dolls’ School, 1900 (NGI.2535)
Back Cover: Henry Pelham (1749–1806), Portrait of
Master Lewis Farley Johnston, 1779 (NGI.19615)
National Gallery of Ireland | Gailearaí Náisiúnta na hÉireann

exploring childhood - National Gallery of Ireland

Transcription

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