Childhood

About

Childhood in art ranges from play and innocence to labour and fear. The historian Philippe Ariès argued in 1960 that the idea of childhood as a separate stage of life took shape only gradually, and pictures help trace the change. Pieter Bruegel the Elder crowded dozens of games into Children's Games (1560), while Jean-Siméon Chardin's quiet Soap Bubbles (c. 1733–34) and Joshua Reynolds's The Age of Innocence (1788) show the 18th century's new tenderness towards the young.

Francisco Goya's portrait Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zúñiga (1787–88) adds a warning: cats fix their eyes on the pet magpie at the small boy's feet. Photography brought social urgency when Lewis Hine documented children working in mills and mines in the 1900s and 1910s, and Helen Levitt caught New York children playing in the streets. Contemporary artists often unsettle the image: Yoshitomo Nara's big-headed children stare out with a scowl.