Pictures of Childhood
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Pictures of Childhood A close study of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s The Strawberry Girl, including a selection of his paintings of children, read in light of his The Discourses on Art and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education. Oda Nygaard Nordby Master Thesis in History of Art Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas UNIVERSITY OF OSLO Spring 2015 II Pictures of Childhood A close study of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s The Strawberry Girl, including a selection of his paintings of children, read in light of his The Discourses on Art and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education. III © Oda Nygaard Nordby 2015 Pictures of Childhood: a close study of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s The Strawberry Girl, including a selection of his paintings of children, read in light of his The Discourses on Art and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education. Oda Nygaard Nordby http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo IV Abstract Pictures of Childhood is a study of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s paintings of children in light of Reynolds’s The Discourses on Art, 1769-1790 , and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education, 1762 . A close reading of The Discourses on Art reveals that Reynolds thought art should seek a general truth, and that art should make an impression on the beholder’s imagination and feeling. In Emile, Rousseau abandons original sin. This led to a perception of childhood as a happy and content phase of life. Furthermore, Rousseau emphasized childhood by letting the child explore the world on its own terms. In this thesis, I will analyse Reynolds’s painting The Strawberry Girl, 1772-73, as well as a selection of Reynolds’s paintings of children. I aim at investigating the relations between The Discourses on Art and Reynolds’s paintings of children and as a result promote Reynolds as a conveyer of the different aspects and sentiments of childhood. Reynolds and Rousseau both affected their time greatly, and it is likely that their paths have crossed. I therefore explore in what ways Rousseau’s writings in Emile, knowingly and unknowingly, are present in Reynolds’s joyful and tender renderings of children. As a result, I found that Reynolds’s artistic development embodies the establishment of the innocent and content child in visual art. V VI Acknowledges Upon completion of my master thesis, I wish to thank the following people; supervisor Øivind Storm Bjerke, Bente Larsen and Espen Johnsen, University of Oslo, for helpful feedback and encouragement. Svein Aamold, University of Tromsø, for introducing me to Reynolds, Dr Lucy Davis at The Wallace Collection for taking an interest in my project, and the staff at the University of St Andrews Special Collection for guidance. Fellow students in Norway and Scotland, my parents for their love and support, and my dear Ole for helping me see solutions when problems occurred. I hereby present to the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas, University of Oslo: Pictures of Childhood: a close study of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s The Strawberry Girl, including a selection of his paintings of children, read in light of his The Discourses on Art and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education. VII VIII Table of content 1 Introduction........................................................................................................................ 1 1.1 Presentation................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Structure ..................................................................................................................... 2 1.3 Material ...................................................................................................................... 4 1.3.1 Paintings............................................................................................................. 4 1.3.2 The physical condition of The Strawberry Girl and the fancy pictures............. 5 1.3.3 Literature............................................................................................................ 6 1.3.4 Existing research ................................................................................................ 6 1.3.5 Challenging Materials: Joshua Reynolds and Artistic Experiment in the Eighteenth Century, conference at The Wallace Collection, May 15th 2015.................... 9 1.4 Theory and method................................................................................................... 10 2 Sir Joshua Reynolds and The Discourses on Art .............................................................. 12 2.1 The life of Sir Joshua Reynolds ............................................................................... 12 2.2 The founding of The Royal Academy of Arts.......................................................... 13 2.3 The Discourses on Art by Sir Joshua Reynolds ....................................................... 14 2.3.1 Reynolds’s order of study ................................................................................ 15 2.3.2 The great universal truth .................................................................................. 16 2.3.3 Taste ................................................................................................................. 17 2.3.4 Genius and the end of art.................................................................................. 18 2.4 Summary and discussion.......................................................................................... 19 3 Sir Joshua Reynolds’s paintings of children .................................................................... 20 3.1 Historic background on the fancy picture ................................................................ 21 3.2 Reynolds’s use of beggar children as models .......................................................... 23 3.2.1 Portrait of Sir Francis Ford’s Children Giving a Coin to a Beggar Boy, Sir William Beechey, 1793.................................................................................................... 24 3.3 The Strawberry Girl, 1772-73, The Wallace Collection’s version .......................... 26 3.3.1 Identification of the model............................................................................... 28 3.3.2 The Strawberry Girl and A Girl Reading ......................................................... 30 3.4 Robinetta , 1786 ........................................................................................................ 31 3.5 Muscipula, presumably 1785 ................................................................................... 32 3.6 Miss Theophila Gwatkin as Simplicity , 1785........................................................... 33 IX 3.7 Miss Jane Bowles , presumably 1775........................................................................ 33 3.8 Lady Caroline Howard , presumably 1778............................................................... 35 3.9 Master Crewe as Henry VIII , presumably 1775 ...................................................... 36 3.10 Master Hare , Francis George Hare, 1788................................................................ 37 3.11 Summary and discussion.......................................................................................... 40 4 Sir Joshua Reynolds’s paintings of children in light of The Discourses on Art ............... 41 4.1 The idea of childhood............................................................................................... 41 4.2 The universal truth of Reynolds’s fancy pictures..................................................... 44 4.3 Art should affect imagination and feeling and please the mind............................... 45 4.4 Summary .................................................................................................................. 46 5 Reynolds and Rousseau.................................................................................................... 47 5.1 Reynolds and Rousseau’s potential crossing of paths.............................................. 47 5.2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Emile, or on Education, 1762 ........................................... 49 5.2.1 Innocence ......................................................................................................... 49 5.2.2 The Age of Innocence , presumably 1788 ......................................................... 50 5.2.3 Miss Crewe, presumably 1775 ......................................................................... 51 5.2.4 Learning and education.................................................................................... 53 5.3 Joseph Wright of Derby: Sir Brooke Boothby, 1781................................................ 54 5.4 Joshua Reynolds: Penelope Boothby, 1788.............................................................. 57 5.5 Reynolds’s paintings in light of Rousseau’s writings .............................................. 59 5.5.1 Fashion and clothing ........................................................................................ 60 5.5.2 The use of nature in Reynolds’s paintings ....................................................... 61 5.6 Summary and discussion.......................................................................................... 62 6 Sexual references in late eighteenth-century fancy pictures and paintings of children ... 64 6.1 Cupid as Link Boy 1774 and Mercury as Cut Purse 1777......................................