Children in Art History

by

Kate Retford

• LAST MODIFIED: 23 September 2024
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0289

Introduction

Images of children have been discussed by scholars in a wide range of disciplines, from anthropology and sociology, through social and cultural history, to art history, film and media studies. This article deals specifically with the discipline of art history, but it is important to note that the subject embraces a broad span of visual culture, encompassing paintings, drawings, sculpture, photographs, prints, and decorative arts. Charting the most concentrated areas of scholarly interest, with a focus on work in the English language, it lays out the strong bias to date on Western art. Much is still to be done to broaden discussions to the more fully Global. Furthermore, analysis of the theme of children in art somewhat peters out with late-19th-century material (for scholarship on more recent representations, see also the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Visual Representations of Childhood). A key preoccupation has been the degree to which children’s particular characteristics have, or have not, been engaged with in art works. This is rooted in the French historian Philippe Ariès’s use of visual material to argue that no concept of childhood existed before the twelfth century, and that a new sense of the significance of the child only arose in the Early Modern era. In Christian art the most frequently represented child is, of course, the infant Christ, although the childhoods of Mary and John the Baptist have also been important subjects. Other commonly represented children include Cupid (often shown as a naked boy), Hercules, and the cherubim and putti who feature in much medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art. Child portraits were produced from the early Renaissance onwards, although these were generally commissioned by only the wealthiest members of society until the eighteenth century. A considerable body of scholarship centers on that latter period, traditionally seen as witnessing the arrival of the image of “the new child,” with a novel emphasis on distinctive and emotionally appealing childish characteristics. Children have also featured in works of genre. Prominent examples include images of childhood games and play in the 16th- and 17th-century Netherlands. Sometimes, such representations have been considered as engaging with the state and quality of childhood: at other times, they have been understood rather as vehicles through which to consider adult issues. Indeed, a key issue for this topic is the fact that children are almost always depicted by adults, for the benefit of adults.

Philippe Ariès and the Child in Art

Although Ariès introduced himself in Ariès 1962 as a “demographic historian,” he famously used images to underpin key aspects of his arguments about children, education, and the family. As well as canonical works of art, he drew on visual culture ranging from tapestries through engravings to fans in order to argue for crucial changes in the conceptualization of childhood. Ariès’s arguments have been engaged with by almost every subsequent writer on children in art—largely critically. Burton 1989 is a useful overview of Ariès’s use of images and subsequent debate. Retford 2016 provides an update in the same historical journal.

• Ariès, Philippe. Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. Translated by Robert Baldick. New York: Vintage, 1962.

  First published in Paris in 1960. Ariès used images as historical evidence for children’s material culture, and to make the case for fundamental changes in conceptions of childhood. He argued that the absence of images of children until the twelfth century demonstrated the absence of any concept of a distinct state of childhood. He then charted the emergence of that idea in the seventeenth century. Only the first and second French editions actually include any illustrations.

• Burton, Anthony. “Looking forward from Ariès? Pictorial and Material Evidence for the History of Childhood and Family Life.” In Special Issue: The Child in History. Continuity and Change 4.2 (1989): 203–229.

  DOI: 10.1017/S0268416000003660

  A detailed critique of Ariès’s use of visual and material culture, written while Burton was setting up the galleries of the Museum of Childhood (now Young V&A), for a special edition of this journal dealing with “The Child in History.” Burton’s discussion covers the main bodies of visual material used in Ariès’s argument, including medieval art, images of the infant Christ, putti, and 17th-century Netherlandish painting.

• Retford, Kate. “Philippe Ariès’s ‘Discovery of Childhood’: Imagery and Historical Evidence.” Continuity and Change 31.3 (2016): 391–418.

  DOI: 10.1017/S0268416016000254

  Rooted in work prompted by the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Centuries of Childhood, this article follows Burton’s in Continuity and Change to consider Ariès’s use of images, subsequent criticisms, and more recent scholarship. It explores ongoing issues around the use of images as evidence for the histories of children and childhood. Joshua Reynolds’s portrait of Master Henry Crewe (c. 1775) is discussed as a case study.