Arts & Leisure
A visual experience: Childhood in 19th-century art and culture at PMA
By Rose Safran
Winslow Homer's "Snap the Whip"
Courtesy photo
PORTLAND - Innovative, informative and visually arresting, the exhibition reflecting on childhood in 19th-century art and culture, which just opened at the Portland Museum of Art, is well worth the short trip to Portland.
Organized by Stanford University's Visual Art Center and on view earlier this year in Washington at the Smithsonian, it offers both an aesthetic as well as a unique learning experience, not only through some 110 carefully selected paintings, but also through illustrated children's books, journals, prints including engravings and lithographs, magazine advertisements and photographs including daguerreotypes, many on loan from private collections.
Taken as a whole, this notable exhibition is a thoughtful comment on American history during a time crucial to the development and expansion of the country as a nation. Insightful, educational, at times exquisite in its portrayal of children of various classes, with works by gifted well-known artists such as Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, George Catlin, Eastman Johnson, Lilly Martin Spencer as well as by obscure ones, it reveals sociological, cultural, educational and attitudinal aspects of an ever-changing society testing its ground as a nation. The children of one era are, after all, the backbone of the next.
The exhibition's broad visual and historical merit is accomplished through a thematic approach to childhood in 19th-century America; it includes startlingly diverse materials, many striking, all bearing testimony to various aspects of childhood life during this solidifying century.
Six themes dominate: "The Country Boy" and "Daughters of Liberty" dealing with the his-and-her divisions of both play and labor, in particular with the responsibilities relegated to children for the necessary occupations of the era; "Children of Bondage" commenting on various aspects of slavery; "The Ragamuffin" depicting awareness of the results of mass immigration, especially on children in urban centers; "The Papoose" reflecting on the position of the American Indian, and "The New Scholar" portraying a growing public educational system for children of various backgrounds.
Entitled "American ABC: Childhood in 19th-century America" the exhibition includes alphabet books displayed in glass cases throughout the galleries - a distraction, to some extent, from the fundamental themes and paintings on the walls, but nevertheless treasures of the past evoking nostalgia for a simpler and perhaps more fundamental approach to learning than that of today's complex hi-tech modus operandi.
The book titles we read suggest content: "My Darling's ABC" (1815) - a four-foot long extension accordion-shaped alphabet, "Grandma Easy's New Pictorial Bible Alphabet" (c. 1870), Kantner's "Illustrated Book of Objects for Children" (1877), "Starry Flag ABC Book" 1899, "The Anti-Slavery Alphabet" of 1846 (A is an Abolitionist) and Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom's Cabin" of 1853, (opened to Topsy's bringing flowers to Eva.)
On a pedestal in a gallery corner was Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" of 1876 while his Huck Finn was under glass amid other "Country Boy" books. Amid the "Daughters of Liberty" - the future wives of early trend-makers - was, opened to its frontispiece, Louisa May Alcott's illustrated "Little Women" (1868), the book itself joining a collection of "girls' books" depicting homemaker activities. Lessons to be learned are included among such books as "Freaks and Frolics of Little Girls" (1887) opened to "foolish Fanny."
Wonderful works on paper include Louis Prang & Company's 1890 Chromolithograph of two black youngsters, "The Artist" (drawing) and "The Gourmand" (eating a watermelon) behind, Jacob Riis's photographs of "Street Arabs" (as poor homeless urban children were called), "Two Little Braves" (Indian boys) of 1892 and John Choate's 1880s photographs of "Pueblo Students...at Carlisle."
Among the many outstanding paintings are: on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Winslow Homer's icon, "Snap the Whip" depicting play among country youngsters and his "The Watermelon Boys;" William Sidney Mount's "Boy Hoeing Corn," Thomas Eakins' "Elizabeth with her Dog" with the dog standing on its hind legs and also the artist's superb little study for "Negro Boy Dancing" on loan from Washington's National Gallery of Art, and John George Brown's "The Berry Boy" of 1877 showing a boy climbing over a stone wall, his pail filled with berries.
The exhibit is rich with Eastman Johnson paintings. Notable are "The Young Sweep" of 1863 and "Ragamuffin" of 1869, both from private collections and both tender, pre-Ashcan comments on poverty; the fireplace light infused, glowingly-red "Boyhood of Lincoln" of 1868 showing a seated boy reading-studying; "The Party Dress" portraying a young girl's coming of age/entry into the adult world, and "Little Girl with Golden Hair" an industrious youngster busy sewing.
Additionally, The Smithsonian was generous in loaning paintings from its vast collection of George Catlin works of Indians. Catlin was sensitive to Indian woes, both the threat to their lives and way of life, and he portrayed them with compassion and understanding as well as an awareness of their imminent danger, understanding their ultimate attrition. Four important early 19th-century Catlin paintings of Indian children, principally potential leaders and descendants of chieftains are among those on view. Among the illustrated books on Indians is an 1873 one on Pocahontas by Paul Pryor.
A classic late 19th-century country one-room school filled with children is depicted in a small oil by Edward Lamson Henry while "Kept In" by the same artist shows a black girl unhappily solo in the schoolhouse room, probably because she hadn't learned her lesson.
"American ABC: Childhood in 19th-century America" will remain on view at PMA through Jan. 7. An illustrated 236-page catalogue of the exhibition published by the Yale University Press is available through the Museum Shop. Related programs have been planned, including a hands-on "child's play" exploration in the historic McLellan House, which is on-going. For further information, call 775-6148.
