Portrait of a Girl in Red with a Rabbit

In 1762, Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote Emile: or, On Education, championing the idea that children are valuable as individuals and growing up is a process, not an endpoint. The concept of childhood and the depiction of children in art shifted significantly in the eighteenth century, and by the 1800s independent portraits of children abound in European and American art. Since childhood mortality rates were high, families commissioned local artists or itinerant “limners” to paint commemorative portraits. In this American painting, the naïve, stylized rendering imparts a directness to the depiction of this little girl who looks out at the viewer, as if she’s been interrupted while feeding grapes to her pet rabbit.