Chasing the Representation of Children on Canvas - The History of Children Painting Starting from Ca
- Frenzi
- Jun 19, 2018
- 6 min read
The Child's Bath (1893)
“There is someone who feels as I do.” There is an artist Degas has described as such. That person is the impressionist painter Mary Stevenson Cassatt. Cassatt is a very interesting figure in art history. She was a female painter who made her name known along with Berthe Morisot in an age when men ruled the world of art, and despite being from America, she was active in Europe and acquainted herself with impressionists such as Degas, joining in their style of art. But today, I would like to put the focus on who Cassatt portrayed on her canvas- children.
Let’s go back into time to ancient Egypt. The mural to the right illustrates the hunting of Egypt’s royal family. The woman behind the man is his wife, and the small person drawn below his legs is his son. Children were not often the subject of painting in ancient times. Even if they were drawn, it wasn’t with big heads and young faces, but merely as a ‘small person.’ Such a style went on for as long as to be detected even in medieval European paintings.
Of course, various other reasons such as unrealistic styles could be assumed as the reason, but the main one would be that the perspective on children were quite different from today. In ancient hunting societies, children were those without economic abilities. Of course, they were protected because they were underdeveloped individuals, but the consensus that children should be respected more than that was inexistent. Even after societies developed into farming societies and civilization arose, there wasn’t much change. Birth rates increased compared to hunting societies, but children died as much, so the death of young ones were not necessarily the focus of attention. The love of parents for children was performed inside a very limited and regulated boundary.
The fact that this perspective continued to the medieval ages can be seen through paintings from just before Gothic and Renaissance ages. The painting to the left is a piece named “Madonna of Veveri,” drawn around 1350. The child in Madonna’s arms seems a little difficult to describe as ‘childlike’ from a glance. This painting, though, is on the more moderate scale because it was drawn around the mid to late 12th century, and other paintings from medieval ages draw children as having bodies and faces similar to adults. It’s just that the size of their bodies were different. Many paintings even emphasized the muscles on children’s bodies as if they were drawing the body of a grown person! (You can especially see the highlight on abs.)
French scholar Phillip Aries collectively researched numerous paintings and texts in which children appear in order to analyse how the concept of a ‘child’ came to be. According to him, up to the 12th century, Medieval Western art was uncaring about children, or did not try to describe them in detail. The fact that children were painted with developed muscles and faces of adults like the painting we saw above proves that no effort to draw the ‘characteristics of children’ were made. Like I have already stated, children were drawn only as small people, or little adults.
Aries goes on to argue that there was no difference in the conception of adult and children even in daily lives. This can be proved through various historical evidence. For example, children wore clothes like that of adults once they were old enough to get out of their infantile clothes. Though there were differences in the clothes according to class, children merely wore smaller versions of adults’ clothes. Furthermore, it was not considered awkward to talk about sex in front of children. From royals to ordinary farmers, obscenities were uttered without restraint in front of children. Because it was natural that children participate in the play culture of adults, they also participated in gambling such as card games and dice games. Of course, no one thought that this was wrong.
Let’s look at the medieval society for a moment. The Medieval era was a time when religion spread to become an ideology that controlled society. (Of course, this was true in some ancient societies, but what makes the medieval ages unique is that a monotheistic religion, not a polytheistic one, especially the Catholic church, became so great as to be able to grasp political power.) This worldly religion that spread out of one specific region affected children’s place in society until the 1500s in various ways. Religion strongly chastised actions such as abortion and abandoning children, giving great help in their protection. It had increased sympathetic attention towards children. On the other hand, the original crime concept of Christianity justified the punishing of children and publicized the rather horrific disciplinary method of threatening children that they would go to hell if they did not stick to the rules. Religion also greatly affected the arts, for arts from the Medieval ages were mostly permitted to only carry religion content, and thus biblical figures such as Jesus or the Virgin Mary were mostly used as motifs. So children in paintings are mostly a young Jesus, which might help understand why Medieval infants were illustrated as mature.
Only when we go from the Medieval era to the Renaissance do we see children in paintings in the form of ‘children’ that we are used to. Art history professor Averett says that “parents in the Middle Ages didn't love their kids any differently than Renaissance parents did. But during the Renaissance, a transformation of the idea of children was underway: from tiny adults to uniquely innocent creatures.” This transformation of ideas on children by adults were soon shown in how adults portrayed children. The representation of children in art inevitably mirrors what society thinks about the child, the purpose of art, or the ideal purpose of parents. To be candid, the change of perception in the Renaissance wasn’t as dramatic as to change the Medieval views upside down, but I feel what lack of change in perception was saturated by the artistic styles of the Renaissance. In the Renaissance, the focus of art shifted from God to man based on humanism, and realistic illustration based on scientific methods was emphasized. Furthermore, the desire of the growing middle class to leave a painting of their children harmonized with such ideology to result in the opportunity to paint “ordinary” infants, instead of Jesus. This led to the drawing of children in a more human and realistic way.
Eleonora von Gonzaga(Peter Rubens) Portrait of Maria Apollonia of Savoy (Jan Kraek)
These two paintings from the late 16th century and early 17th century are starkly different from those of previous eras. Like I have explained, the children wear clothes that look just like that of adults, but they have larger heads and are chubby. Children now became popular models for famous painters such as Rubens, Van Dyck, and Champaigne. However, although the identity of children as those with individual character was recognized, the characteristics of them as offspring were still emphasized. Parents still abhorred the sight of children crawling around and mumbling, as such actions reminded them of animals, and would often hang their children or lay them down anywhere after rolling them up in blankets. The sucking action of children while being fed wasn’t seen in a positive light either.
So when did the concept of children come to match the idea in our heads today? Major shifts on perception of children happened throughout the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. In the late 17th century, political philosopher John Locke criticized traditional Christianity, arguing that children are not being tainted by the original sin, but are ‘tabula rasa (empty slate)’s, and must undergo detailed education. The belief that children can reach reason through the right education started to spread among Wester philosophers as the original sin theory of Protestantism started to fade away. Another important change was the stressing of emotional bonds centering the mother. Furthermore, the intellectual grounds of the 18the century led to the idealization of children. Texts regarding the middle class describe children as innocent and full of love, and worthy to be loved. From then on, fondling over children became the natural thing to do. The emotion of fondling, which had been limited to infants only, expanded to children in general. The concept of children had been invented.
Korea went through a similar change during the age of Enlightenment. Bang Jeon-Hwan, who was active during the Japanese colonization, invented the word ‘Eorini (child in Korean).’ Children, who had previously been called ‘kid,’ ‘baby,’ or ‘little one,’ were now called and united under a term that respected them. Bang also led a campaign requesting that children should also be addressed in honorifics, and actively argued for the enhancement of children’s rights. Had it not been for him, the words ‘Eorini’ might have been made much later.
Now we have come back to the times of Cassatt. Do the children in the paintings feel a bit different now that you discovered that children were not always viewed as the image that we take for granted? A child spends time leisurely, lying down on a comfy sofa. She would soon have dinner, and go to bed in the loving hands of her parents. What would this scene have been drawn like if this child had been born one generation, or two generation, or several generations before? The child drawn by Cassatt’s loving brush strokes will continue to live on, never knowing the answer to that question.
－ Ｅｕｎｊａｙ
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