| THE WEB PAGE for this exhibition
provides extensive commentary, several useful links, and lots of high-resolution
images, displaying relationships between text and image as it proposes
a long list of categories on which the viewer/reader may reflect. These
categories include "The Georgian Family and Parental Roles", "Childbirth
and Nursing", "Children and Charity", "The Family and Sentiment", and "When
Children Aren't Children." After making concise reference to Locke and
Rousseau, Stewart comments, "By the end of the period, the child became
allied with the natural world, and childhood a period of improbably extreme
innocence." Though the historical and aesthetic claims are broad and intended
as an introduction to pedagogical, cultural and philosophical issues of
the period, there is a surprising amount of specific commentary.
The idea that the images speak for themselves is an interesting one to set against an exhibition like this. The deeply historical motivation of the exhibit cuts against the ahistorical power to mean that a painting might be seen to claim. These images can either be connected or disconnected from a specific mode of production. How much did such paintings do to construct a natural history of childhood when such painting had such a de-naturing, exclusionary effect on its subjects? (Joan Menefee.) |
Michael Hancher Department of English, University of Minnesota URL: <http://umn.edu/home/mh/txtimjm1.html> Comments to: mh@umn.edu Created 24 November 1997 Last revised 24 December 1997