Depiction of 19th Century American Girls

28/1/2016 Depiction
of 19thCentury American Girls in Paintings and Photographs: Lack of Agency and Empowerment
Nuevo Mundo Mundos
Nuevos
Nouveaux mondes mondes nouveaux Novo Mundo Mundos Novos New world
New worlds
Coloquios | 2014
Les femmes dans les Amériques : Féminismes, études de genre et identités de genre dans les
Amériques, XIXe et XXe siècles – Actes du colloque international des 4, 5 et 6 décembre 2013 à Aixen
Provence
ANNE LESME
Depiction of 19thCentury
American Girls in Paintings
and Photographs: Lack of
Agency and Empowerment
Les petites filles dans la peinture et la photographie américaine au XIXe siècle : entre soumission et
agentivité
Niñas en las representaciones visuales del siglo XIX en los Estados Unidos :objectivadas o agentes
[26/11/2014]
Resúmenes
English Français Español
This article is based on a selection of images of girls and young ladies – the future women
of America – that figure predominantly in visual representations in the 19th century, in
painting and, in the second part of the century, in photography. As an icon of America’s
future, white middleclass American girls became a major subject matter and were
represented in a variety of media and situations in comparison to Native American and
Black girls, whose depiction is extremely rare but symbolically very telling if we consider
their role in society from a white perspective. A common thread is the lack of agency in
American girls throughout the century in comparison to the representations of boys; they
are commonly objectified, supposedly pure and innocent, belonging to the separate sphere
of domesticity. But they do not always comply with this vision inherited from the Cult of
Motherhood. A form of empowerment can be found in subject matters related to education,
https://nuevomundo.revues.org/67429 1/31
28/1/2016 Depiction of 19thCentury American Girls in Paintings and Photographs: Lack of Agency and Empowerment
more than in tomboy depictions. Access to education is truly paramount in the process of
agency while, at this time, working at a young age in difficult conditions was far from being
key to any form of independence.
Cet article s’appuie sur une sélection d’images de petites filles qui figurent de manière
prédominante dans les représentations visuelles du 19ème siècle, dans la peinture et, dans
la seconde partie du siècle, dans la photographie. En tant qu’icône de l'avenir de
l'Amérique, les petites filles américaines blanches de la classe moyenne deviennent un
sujet majeur et croissant de représentation tout au long du siècle dans une variété de
médias et de situations. En comparaison, les représentations des petites filles
amérindiennes et noires sont extrêmement rares mais symboliquement très révélatrices si
l'on considère leur rôle dans la société dans une perspective blanche. Loin d’être des agents,
elles apparaissent plutôt passives, un dénominateur commun au cours du 19e siècle par
rapport aux représentations qui sont faites des garçons ; elles sont souvent objectivés,
considérées comme pures et innocentes, et appartiennent dès leur plus jeune âge à la
sphère domestique. Cependant, ces représentations ne sont pas toujours conformes à une
vision héritée du culte de la maternité. Une forme d'autonomisation est visible dans la
sphère de l'éducation davantage que dans des représentations de garçons manqués.
Este artículo se basa en una selección de imágenes de niñas que se encuentran
predominantemente en las representaciones visuales del siglo XIX, en la pintura y en la
segunda mitad del siglo, en la fotografía. Iconos del futuro de Estados Unidos, las niñas
blancas americanas de clase media se están convirtiendo en un tema de creciente
representación a lo largo del siglo en una variedad de medios de comunicación y
situaciones. En comparación, las representaciones de las niñas amerindias y negras
americanas son extremadamente escasas, pero simbólicamente muy reveladoras si
tenemos en cuenta su papel en la sociedad desde una perspectiva blanca. Lejos de ser
agentes aparecen más bien pasivas, un denominador común a lo largo del siglo en relación
con las representaciones que se hacen de los chicos; ellas son a menudo objetivadas,
consideradas como puras e inocentes, perteneciendo desde una edad muy temprana a la
esfera doméstica. Sin embargo estas representaciones no siempre son acordes con una
visión heredada del culto a la maternidad. Se percibe cada vez más una forma de
emancipación en la esfera de la educación, que en las representaciones de las mujeres de
aspecto masculino.
Entradas del índice
Mots clés : représentation, peinture, photographie, petite fille, EtatsUnis, agentivité
Keywords : depiction, painting, photography, girlhood, UnitedStates, agency
Palabras claves : representación, pintura, fotografia, niñas, Estados Unidos, agentividad
Texto integral
1 As the icon of America’s future, following the revolution of 1776, depiction of
youth has always played an important role in American history 1. In the 19 th
century, supported by the growing role conferred to children in family and by
technological inventions of photography and advances in the printing process,
depictions of boys and girls diversified and were widely disseminated, allowing
different types to emerge.
2 This article is based on a selection of images of girls and young ladies – the
future women of America – that figure predominantly in visual representations,
whether in painting and, in the second part of the century, in photography. If the
ability of American girls to embody the values of the era is predominant
(stereotypes of True Womanhood), we have paid special attention to their
presence in the public sphere, whether at school or in a working environment.
3 Critical support on visual representations of childhood in the United States is
not prolific compared to Europe. In order to analyze the depiction of boys and
girls, one must turn to two volumes dedicated specifically to children and two
volumes of American art history with a cultural and social approach. In Young
America: Childhood in 19th Century Art and Culture2, Claire Perry shows how
portrayals of children reflect the national identity as much as they contribute to
building it after 1820 (up until the early years of the 19 th century, depiction of
children were closely related to their British prototypes), a process we encounter
later on with photography. More recently, Holly Pyne Connor curated an
exhibition in the Newark Museum entitled Angels and Tomboys: Girlhood in
19 thCentury American Art3. One must also refer to Anne Higonnet’s work on
visual culture4 Pictures of Innocence, the History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood,
keeping in mind that the chapters dedicated to the 19 th century mainly refer to
British artists. David M. Lubin’s Picturing a Nation. Art and Social Change in
NineteenthCentury America5, adopts a more controversial stance on how
children were depicted in PostCivil War America, focusing almost exclusively on
white middleclass American girls. In Framing America: a Social History of
America Art, Frances K. Pohl examines the complex intersection of art and
politics and pays close attention to Native and African Americans. On
photography, no extensive study has been carried out specifically on children
embracing the whole 19 th century and we will favor the approach of historians of
American photography such as François Brunet 6, Naomie Rosemblum7 and two
recent doctoral dissertations8 .
4 I will argue that a common thread is the lack of agency of American girls
throughout the 19 th century; they are commonly objectified, supposedly pure and
innocent, belonging to the separate sphere of domesticity, and submitted to men’s
authority. This study will also show depictions of American girls which do not
always comply with this vision inherited from the Cult of Motherhood
characterizing the Victorian era and which foreshadow the 20th century to come.
In the first part of this article, we will see that white middleclass American girls
became a major subject matter and were represented in a variety of media and
situations compared to Native and AfricanAmerican girls, whose depiction is
extremely rare but symbolically very telling if we consider their role in society from
a white perspective, as we shall see in the second part of this article.
The white middleclass girl: the
centrality of the private sphere and a
paradoxical freedom
The changing experience of childhood in the
17th and 18th century: from a productive role
to an “emotionally priceless child” (V. Zelizer)
5 Throughout the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, children assumed a
productive role within a selfsufficient household economy, from the age of six or
seven years old. Whereas boys were helping on the farm, girls were often in the
home, cooking, spinning and making clothes. Instruction, largely religious, was
taught in the home by the parents, with the father playing a leading role, and
emphasis was on religion. Since painting was mainly influenced by the British
Art, it is hard to find examples of such a social organization. Due to major social
and economic changes and new ideas regarding the nature of children, the
childhood experience in white households was transformed during the 18th
century and into the 19 th century. Viviana Zelizer describes an “economically
useless but emotionally priceless child”:
By the midnineteenth century, the construction of the economically
worthless child had been in large part accomplished among the American
urban middle class. Concern shifted to children’s education as the
determinant of future marketplace worth. […] However, the economic value
of the workingclass child increased, rather than decreased in the nineteenth
century.9
6 With a lower birth rate and labor generally accomplished outside the family, the
role of women in nurturing and childrearing grew substantially and the gender
gap in terms of education was sharper than ever. Whereas daughters were reared
to be chaste, loving and nurturing, eventually being prepared for marriage and the
experience of motherhood, boys were expected to be ambitious, competitive,
assertive and to exhibit gentlemanly selfcontrol within the family.
Domestic virtue and the temptation of liberty
7 Portrayals of girls were consistently less prevalent in comparison to the
representations of boys – country boys, street boys, boys at school or preparing for
public life – but they could still be found in certain paintings and other visual
media which testify to their importance in social life: magazine covers, billboards,
calling cards, newspapers, stereographs, etc. (Claire Perry).
Fig. 1 – John George Brown, Resting in the Wood (1866)
8 The range of subjects is limited and the depiction of domestic virtue dominates
the genre. When the child girl is outside, in the woods for example, the subject
seems to belong to the ideal realm of childhood, full of innocence and filled with
agreeable activities, but she is very often alone and her gestures are very telling in
terms of internalized constraints. John George Brown’s Resting in the Wood
(1866) conveys a sense of piety usually seen in a Madonna depiction, all the more
so that the young girl’s head is surrounded by bright light, and the position of her
hands, as if ready to pray, seems to respond to the inclination of her head, typical
in Madonna’s portraits. She is as emblematic of the culture of selfimprovement as
girls portrayed in a more domestic setting.
Fig. 2 – Seymour J. Guy, Temptation (1884)
9 While at home, girls are expected to learn the art of being a good wife and
homemaking. They are usually portrayed gathering flowers, occupied with
clothes, or interacting with pets, either playing or watching them. Dolls are also
frequently associated with girls as a part of the gendered accessories which
contribute to defining them as sweet and submissive, a “motherinwaiting”
(Holly P. Connor). To a certain extent, the numerous pictures which can be found
of siblings, where the girl or the very young woman is taking care of her brother or
sister as if he or she were her own child, as in Eastman Johnson’s The Party Dress
(The Finishing Touch) (1872)10, symbolize the child unconsciously prefiguring
his/her adult role. Other images convey ambiguous messages. In Seymour J.
Guy’s Temptation (1884), and Close Your Eyes (1863)11, the little girl is
ostentatiously giving a red fruit – a forbidden fruit? – to her brother and the title
chosen for the canvas clearly undermines the supposed innocence of the child girl
who is not passive any more but could be seen rather as an agent of sin.
Fig. 3 – Seymour J. Guy, Gathering Flowers (1861)
Fig. 4 – Seymour J. Guy, Making Believe (1870)
Fig. 5 – Seymour J. Guy, Making a Train (1867)
10 The imagery of flowers has been common in Western Art history since ancient
time but it was particularly used in the United States in the 19 th century as a
symbol of purity, grace, tenderness and fertility as in Seymour J. Guy’s Gathering
Flowers (1861), or as in F.A. Wenderoth’s Portrait of the Artist’s Daughter
(1855). Selecting outfits, dressing for special occasions or playing with a garment
are also frequent; these paintings often portray the transition from childhood to
adulthood. In this respect, the rigid protocols and constraints visible in Eastman
Johnson’s The Party Dress (1872) is opposed to the sense of eroticism conveyed by
Seymour J. Guy’s Dressing for the Rehearsal, or Making Believe (1870) and even
more so Making a Train (1867) which has been very abundantly commented12.
Adolescence, a new concept in the end of the 19th century which only became
plainly acknowledged in the 20th, deserves a study of its own. With a few
exceptions, we have limited our study to girls under twelve or fourteen years old.
Fig. 6 – Seymour J. Guy, Girl with Canary (The New Arrival) (1860)
11 Images of girls with pets depict conflicting messages. On the one hand animals
are associated with the freedom of nature as in Eastman Johnson's The Pets
(1856)13. On the other hand, girls are ultimately faced with a future of seclusion at
home, a concept which is best embodied by Seymour J. Guy’s Girl with Canary
(The New Arrival) (1860), whose caged bird mirrors the fate awaiting the young
lady.
12 In a period of time when the marketplace dictated numbers of representations,
artists and studio photographers often met their audience’s demands for a
sentimentalized depiction of girlhood. By doing so, they did not always comply
with “the four cardinal virtues” of True Womanhood: “piety, purity,
submissiveness and domesticity”14 and a sense of freedom and eroticism
sometimes emerged – as in Making a Train, by Seymour J. Guy – that could be
seen as undercutting the iconic vision of a wise and obedient child thanks to
compelling and transgressive female images. This argument is defended by Holly
Conor in the recent exhibition she curated in Newark museum Angels & Tomboys:
Girlhood in 19thCentury American Art15; she has identified transgressive images
of “tomboys, working children and adolescents”, along with the “pervasive
characterization” of the project, “sentimental portrayals of girls as angelic, passive
and domestic”16. The necessity to avoid a simplistic reading of the subject is also
shared by Claudia Nelson and Lynne Vallone in The Girl’s Own: Cultural
Histories of the AngloAmerican Girl, 18301915:
Poised not only between childhood and adulthood but also between purity
and desire, home and market, tradition and change, nineteenthcentury
AngloAmerican girls at once symbolized, experienced, and in some degree
forwarded the cultural crisis into which they were born. (…) it is unwise to
read the Victorian Girl simply, whether as a creature of patriarchal
repression or as a latetwentiethcentury teenager in period costume. Often,
indeed, it is difficult to separate repression from empowerment.17
Fig. 7 – Seymour J. Guy, Unconscious of Danger (1865)
13 Unconscious of Danger by Seymour J. Guy (1865) offers an interesting
transition to our reflection. While depicting a brother and sister at the edge of a
cliff, the painter summarizes the welldifferentiated status and role of men and
women in Victorian society. The boy approaches the cliff and stares at the
precipice, little aware of the danger but dreaming of an illustrious future, while at
the same time his vigilant sister reaches out to bring him to reason. The child’s
gesture also reminds the girls of the American Revolution that they enjoy a certain
amount of freedom as long as they are children (in many ways greater than in
Europe) since what is to be expected as a woman – to become wife and mother – is
a more constricted life. This sense of freedom can even be observed in many
representations, some of them picturing girls as mischievous or naughty in
magazines or newspapers as in Lilly Martin Spencer’s The Fruits of Temptation
(1857) for example. It echoes the vivid accounts made by outside observers such
as Alexis de Tocqueville who insisted on the paradoxical autonomy granted to
American girls and the constraints imposed on American women once being
married. As Claire Perry wrote:
Foreign visitors often remarked on the severity of the restriction imposed
on American women, as well as the singular autonomy enjoyed by American
girls. [They] were astounded by the liberties granted to girls, who were
allowed to play with boys, engage in vigorous sports, and appeared
unchaperoned at social events. The observers noted that these freedoms
lasted only until marriage, however, after which Americans females were
deprived of the rights that even aristocratic Europeans considered
fundamental in civilized society.18
14 What Tocqueville witnessed can be observed in the many pictures which usually
stage little girls engaging in leisure activities and therefore convey a real sense of
freedom, such as Three Girls On A Swing – The Three Tomboys (1868) by John
George Brown, Seymour J. Guy’s Girl and Kitten (1862)19 or Winslow Homer’s
energetic young girls in “Winter”–A skating scene (1868)20. But very few images
of tomboys truly challenged gender roles and their subversive nature remains
hypothetical.
Fig. 8 – John G. Brown, Three Girls on A Swing – The Three Tomboys (1868)
Fig. 9 – Winslow Homer, The Country School (1873)
15 In comparison to boys, for whom the image of schooling was frequently
depicted, the question of female education remained ambiguous. Few paintings
showed girls attending school as in the critically acclaimed Winslow Homer’s The
Country School (1873) or Charles Frederick Bosworth’s New England School
(1852)21, though educational opportunities expanded for girls. Nevertheless,
pictures of child readers, more commonly girl readers, became iconic images, as
Patricia Crain argued in a recent article22. The book appeared very early as an
attribute of power. In the 18th and beginning of the 19 th century, the standing
bookinhand child asserted her rank and class, “the royal road to selfpossession,
or rather the republican and democratic road”23. Meanwhile, “Well into the mid
century, children’s attention often was figured as a property that must always be
free to be mobilized by others–whether teachers, parents, or guardians”24. But if
we look at the numerous examples of such motives in the second half of the 19 th
century, it is striking to notice how selfabsorbed the subject is portrayed. The
reading girl mostly appears as indulging in a compulsive practice, totally
immersed in her activity and not ready to be interrupted, or available for anyone.
She becomes a “figure for interiority”25. Two of Seymour J. Guy’s models are
turning their backs to the window (so far, they were often reading near the
window in a dreamlike state), as if they did not want to be distracted, as in An
interesting Book, and in Young Girl Reading (1877) by Seymour J. Guy, and even
more so in John George Brown’s A Leisure Hour – First Reader (1881). More
traditional images of bedtime reading emerged in the 1870s and testify once again
to the affectionate bond between siblings and of the mothertobe figure of the
child girl as in Guy’s Story of Golden Locks (1870) or Bedtime Story (1878).
Fig. 10 – Seymour J. Guy, An interesting Book
Fig. 11 – Seymour J. Guy, Young Girl Reading (1877)
Fig. 12 – John G. Brown, A Leisure Hour – First Reader (1881)
Fig. 13 – Seymour J. Guy’s Story of Golden Locks (1870)
16 In the second part of the 19 th century, photographs in studio were mainly posed
and printed to look like oil paintings26. The daguerreotype was particularly
popular in the United States27 and it answered an emerging demand
for portraiture from the middle classes. Before 1890, most children were
photographed when they were babies, then around five years old28 . And for
technical reasons – the time necessary to capture a portrait – and cultural ones
– sacralization of the child –, studio photographs of children increased
substantially. The frontier between gender roles is clearly established: boys are
playing and their activities (sport) are sometimes violent, while girls are playing
with dolls, arranging flowers or sewing. At the end of the 19 th century, boys and
girls started being portrayed with one of their parents; pictures with mothers
dominate the genre. The eroticism which pervades some photographs by Julia
Margaret Cameron or Charles Dodgson29 in England was not present in the
United States until the advent of pictorialism led by Stieglitz at the beginning of
the 20th century.
Girls of the working class: contradictory
examples
17 If we explore the issue of social class, while the depiction of innocent and
romantic middleclass children was predominant, the effects on children of the
Industrial Revolution, urbanization and immigration were widely ignored in the
visual arts, especially in photography from the latter half of the 19 th century. A
few exceptions are found in engravings published in newspapers30. As far as
paintings are concerned, the representations are mainly picturesque and the most
disseminated paintings staged boys, as in the famous Eastman Johnson’s
Ragamuffin (1869), or John George Brown’s A Tough Story (1887), which found
their counterparts in innumerable newsboys or shoeshine boys portrayed in
drawings published in Harper’s Weekly. Otherwise, “[u]sually, when slum life
was treated by photography or the other arts, it was romanticized as “quaint” or
“unusual,” states F. M. Szasz31.
Fig. 14 – John G. Brown, Buy a Posy, 1881
Fig. 15 – John G. Brown, The Flower girl (1877)
Fig. 16 – John G. Brown, The Crossing Sweeper (1874)
Fig. 17 – John G. Brown’s The Little Servant (1886)
Fig. 18 – John G. Brown, Tête à Tête (18881890)
18 When they are portrayed, girls are often arranging or selling flowers, alone –
Brown’s Buy a Posy, 1881 – or accompanied by a boy to whom they are related
and are taking care of, as in Brown’s The Flower Girl (1877)32, or by a group
gathering around her. Other occupations, mostly street trades, like the little
sweeper, the servant, or newsgirl are sometimes represented but they are a rarity
and it is always picturesque as in Guy’s The Crossing Sweeper (1860)33, Brown’s
The Crossing Sweeper (1874) or The Little Servant (1886) or Tête à Tête (1888
1890), a rare example of a newsgirl accompanied by a shoeshine boy.
19 The very beginning of social documentary photography, with Jacob Riis at the
end of the 19 th century in New York, offers contradictory examples largely
emphasizing, on the one hand, the lack of agency of the girls depicted and, on the
other hand, a promising future for those who have the chance to go to school.
Fig. 19 – Jacob Riis, “I Scrubs”, Little Katie from the W. 52nd St. Industrial School
(since moved to W. 53rd St.3)
From the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York
Fig. 20 – Jacob Riis, Minding the Baby, ‘A little mother’
Fig. 21 – Jacob Riis, Little Susie at Her Work,Gotham Court (1890)
20 Children of the lower classes may not have necessarily been viewed as miniature
adults but they were expected to grow up fast to be able to support themselves and
very often their families. Most of these pictures showed how quickly children,
especially girls, were expected to enter the adult world, thus how soon they would
lose their youth. “I Scrubs”, Little Katie from the W. 52nd St. Industrial School
(since moved to W. 53rd St.)34 allowed Riis to denounce painful situations in poor
children’s lives. Katie had assumed full responsibility for her siblings since their
mother’s death and father’s remarriage, a situation often experienced by the eldest
girls in a family. Like most girls of her age (between six and nine years old), Katie
was already a worker. Like all children fulfilling an adult’s role, hers was a life
without play or smiles. As Jacob Riis stated: “The picture shows what a sober,
patient, sturdy little thing she was, with that dull life wearing on her day by day
[…] Katie was one of the little mothers whose work never ends. Very early the cross
of her sex had been laid upon the little shoulders that bore it so stoutly”35. In
Minding the Baby, ‘A little mother’, a nineyearold girl is holding her baby
brother in her arms and she is looking after him while her mother is busy working.
As with Little Susie at Her Work, Gotham Court, she spends her days ironing and
“Her shop is her home”. At the beginning of the 20th century, John Spargo
denounced the idealization of “the most pathetic of all poverty’s victims”:
These “little mothers” have been much praised and idealized until we have
been prone to forget that their very existence is a great social menace and
crime. It is true that many of them show a wonderful amount of courage and
precocity in dealing with the babies entrusted to their care. But in praising
these qualities we must not forget that they are still children, necessarily
unfit for the responsibilities thus placed upon them. 36
Fig. 22 – Jacob Riis, Saluting the Flag
21 As opposed to the pictures of “little mothers”, in the photograph Saluting the
flag, in the Mott St. Industrial School (1890) a little girl is holding the American
flag in front of the other students gathered in the classroom, conveying the image
of a girl bound to be emancipated and be more responsible for her future. The
motives of the classroom and the flag, which was colored to be used in Riis’s
lanternslides conferences37, are central. They exemplify how intensively and
frequently the reformers used images of children as symbols of a better future,
making strong appeals to a sense of national belonging. If the United States was
seen as the land of promises and opportunity, improving the living conditions of
its children, native or young immigrants, was a key factor of success. What this
image conveyed was in accordance with a new perception of poverty caused by the
environment and no longer considered as a hereditary curse. What was at stake
was the making of future citizens, and it was the children who embodied a vision
full of hope.
Black and Native Americans, few
depictions submitted to a white
American look
NativeAmericans and the rarity of girls in
visual representations
22 Contrary to the abundant depiction of white upper and middleclass children
and even children of a lower class, in a century more and more fascinated with
childhood, representations of Native American children were a rare subject in the
imagery of the period. The first paintings were made in the 1830s and 1840s
when, due to the Indian Removal Act, a group of artistsexplorers travelled to
make a visual record of the Indian life for a national audience, among them
George Catlin, Seth Eastman, Alfred Jacob Miller and John Mix Stanley. The
survey mainly focused on exotic features and how they differed from Whites, but
we can hardly find any notion of gender since most children are toddlers. When
they are older, boys are overrepresented38 , whether as young hunters or as a
young brave Uncas chief later on.
23 Midcentury depictions of tribal family life are outnumbered by scenes of
violence reflecting the priorities of the time. And when they can be found,
depictions of migration or travelling groups contrast with the domestic habits of
their white counterparts. Children are generally absent or overlooked and treated
as a type of peripheral element present in the scenes39.
24 Finally, in the last decade of the 19 th century, the figure of the papoose emerged
as a central icon of tribal life, along with the beginning of a tourist industry
promoting excursions out West by showing pictures of tribal toddlers as a way to
increase ticket sales40, among them old paintings by Catlin for example. Finally,
Grace Carpenter Hudson’s famous painting Little Mendocino (1892)41, shows
what she specialized in – the depiction of the papoose, a symbol of innocence and
vulnerability, emphasized by the tears of a crying baby. From then on, Native
American children became the main target of assimilation campaigns. Separated
from their parents, they were sent to boarding schools and the few records we have
are photographs, but still very few girls are present.
25 Nowhere as with Native Americans is the absence of girls as striking. As for the
depiction of women, they seem to be exclusively related to their mother’s role and
the close bonding they experience with their children in particular.
26 As a more democratic art, photography in the United States quickly appeared to
be more egalitarian and antihierarchical, focusing on the description of everyday
life and on the art of the portrait. As early as the mid19 th century, some
ethnographic assignments focused on portraying minorities, and especially
Native Americans, allowing little girls to be depicted more frequently, though in
an aestheticized manner, as in Moki Girls by John K. Hillers (1879)42.
AfricanAmerican girls: stereotyped or absent
27 Similar observations can be made with black American children; they are a
rarity in 19 thcentury American painting. Preceding the Civil War, in 1826, the
Pennsylvania artist Robert Street painted Children of Commodore John Daniel
Danels, a wealthy Baltimore shipowner. There is no black girl in the painting but
two black boys who are portrayed framing a group of white children who are
posing. Whereas one of the children is a participant, the other one is an onlooker,
half hidden behind the door. A kind of racial harmony surfaces in the posture of
the child in the foreground, reinforced by the look he exchanges with the white boy
on the left hand side of the painting. But the realm of childhood is fragile, as the
bubble at the center of the composition, and we quickly understand the ephemeral
nature of this harmony.
28 The restriction placed on the black population in the first part of the 19 th
century, with slavery in the South and racial discrimination in the North,
including laws preventing any kind of access to economic or social power, or any
kind of participation in the nation’s life for Blacks, was accompanied by visual
productions in which women were toughly depreciated:
The visual imagery of elite and popular culture drew on an extensive
repertory of derogatory stereotypes built up since colonial times. Painting
and prints, which both inspired and were inspired by portrayals in
contemporary literature and theatre, characterized AfricanAmericans as
lazy, dimwitted, ugly, sly, and susceptible to every kind of vice. Artists who
thought it expedient to steer clear of black’s notorious sensuality chose
childhood themes, which resonated favorably with white viewers who
believed in black’s essential childlike nature.43
29 The most typical stereotype concerned the black servant girls and their
supposed lack of common sense; Harriet Cany Peal, in Her Mistress’s Clothes,
1848, portrayed the colored servant girl as a comical and irresponsible figure. Lilly
Martin Spencer, in Height of Fashion, c.1854 44 is mocking the pretention to
fashion and aspiration to elegance of a young girl that is made ridiculous by the
artist. Another persistent and growing contemptuous stereotype was the one of
the banjo players, caricatured in George Thatcher’s Greatest Minstrel: “Hello my
baby” (1899)45 where a girl can be seen in the foreground with stereotypically
thick lips and funny hair.
30 A few paintings could be found in portraits ordered by black middleclass
families in the North, such as William Prior’s Three Sisters of the Copeland
Family (1854)46. We can find no sign of derision or disrespect in this portrait
which reminds us of the use of flowers previously studied for girls as an emblem of
female virtue. A similar observation can be made at the end of the 19 th century in
photography when black people started to photograph their community.
Fig. 23 – Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893
Fig. 24 – Eastman Johnson, Negro Life in the South (Kentucky Home), 1859
31 Interestingly enough, during their campaign, the Abolitionists produced

pictures and stories about black children, mainly with boys, to fight against those
stereotypes; some of these works targeted white children who were seen as able to
influence their parents and viewed as the future of the antislavery movement.
While Winslow Homer made a lot of beautiful portraits of black boys, black girls
seem to be absent; the same remark applies to the African American artist Henry
Ossawa Tanner whose The Banjo Lesson in 1893 offers a beautiful counterpart to
the previous caricature, but no sign of girls in the work based on my research on
portraits. Nevertheless, girls or baby girls are present when the artist is picturing a
group of people, as in the painting by Eastman Johnson entitled Negro Life in the
South (Kentucky Home), 1859. The characters are engaged in a variety of leisure
time activities, playing the banjo, dancing, socializing, and playing with children.
More than being connected to a typical American environment, the style and
subject matter seem to refer to the influence of 17thcentury Dutch painting. It is
worth noticing that the skin color of the girl differs slightly. It could be accounted
for by the varying skin color of Black Americans but more probably it was the
result of a rape committed by the white male owner on his black female slave. The
offspring of these violent encounters were always considered Black, since one drop
of black blood was legally enough to confer a black and therefore slave status.
32 Few photographs can be found in the end of the 19 th century. Daguerreotypes
are regarded as a democratization of art, including for the black community 47. But
finding copies of these photos is extremely difficult 48 . We can refer to France
Benjamin Johnston who was hired in 1899 to document students at the Hampton
Institute, a school that provided vocational training and education for newly freed
slaves and Native Americans, even though young ladies rather than little girls
were photographed. Her scenes are carefully constructed to exemplify the benefits
of vocational training in a progressive perspective. She opposed those images to a
report on living conditions of African American in agriculture49. Riis is also
famous for a photograph portraying three school girls, and among them an
AfricanAmerican, a photograph published in 1892 in Children of the Poor.
Fig. 25 – Jacob Riis, The board of election inspectors in the beach street school
(1892)
Conclusion
33 I would like to reiterate how the transition from a colonial or postcolonial
economy to an increasingly urban industrial capitalist economy emphasized the
separation between two spheres. Painting and engraving echo this separation,
particularly with regard to the upper and rising middle classes. While, in the 19 th
century, white girls embodied stability, the idea of mutability was applied to men
in a period of time when national identity was reflected in imagery of different
types.
34 In comparison to boys, girls are defined by their passivity or lack of agency. The
little girl is mainly portrayed as an idealized child in rural settings or, more
frequently, in her house, arranging flowers or caring for pets. In this process,
American females seem to have temporarily lost a form of independence.
Regarding Native Americans and black girls, the child imagery produced is further
limited in terms of painting patterns. This economy of production of visual
materials reflects a lack of interest indicating their symbolic exclusion.
35 Child girls’ agency can nevertheless be found in subject matters related to
education, when at school or when reading a book or holding a flag like in Riis’s
picture. It prefigures the evolution into the 20th century and her constantly
evolving role in society. Access to education is truly paramount in the process of
agency, especially when workingclass labor failed to lead to independence. As
Lynne Vallone and Claudia Nelson state – and warn us – we should be cautious
as to where to place the Girl in the 19 th century: “Commentators were unsure
where to place her –as the light of the home? the potential academic or
professional rival of her brother? the (a)sexualized object of male desire? And
having thus classified her, they had no guarantee that she would stay on her
pigeonhole”50.
Bibliografía
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OpenEdition y beneficie de sus servicios, por favor escribanos a access@openedition.org.
Brunet, François, La Naissance de l’idée de photographie. Paris : Presses Universitaires de
France, 2000.
Brunet, François, « Le daguerréotype aux EtatsUnis : un art social », L'art de la
photographie des origines à nos jours, sous la direction de André Gunthert et Michel
Poivert (coll. L'art et les grandes civilisations), Espagne : Citadelles & Mazenot, 2007.
Cogan, Frances B., AllAmerican Girl: The Ideal of Real Womanhood in MidNineteenth
Century America, Athens: U of Georgia P, 1989.
Higonnet, Anne, Pictures of Innocence, the History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood, London,
Thames & Hudson, 1998.
Holly Pyne Connor, with contributions by Sarah Burns, Barbara Dayer Gallati, and Lauren
Lessing, Angels and Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th Century American Art, Newark, N.J.:
Newark Museum; San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, 2012.
Lesme, Anne, « L’enfant dans la photographie sociale américaine de 1888 à 1941 : enjeux
sociaux et esthétiques », thèse de doctorat, AixMarseille Université, 2012.
Lubin, David M., “Guys and Dolls: Framing Femininity in PostCivil War America”,
Chapter 5, in Lubin, David M. Picturing a Nation. Art and Social Change in Nineteenth
Century America, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994.
McNair Vosmeier, Sarah, The Family Album: Photography and American Family Life
since 1860, Ph.D., Indiana University, 2003.
Mager, Alison, ed., Children’s Fashion of the Past in Photographs, An Album in 165 Prints,
Dover Publications, 1978.
Nelson, Claudia and Lynne Vallone (ed), The Girl’s Own: Cultural Histories of the Anglo
American Girl, 18301915. Paperback edition, USA, 2010 [1993].
New York in the Nineteenth Century: 321 Engravings from Harper’s Weekly and other
Contemporary Sources / [compiled by] John Grafton, New York: Dover Publications, 1977.
Norton, Mary Beth and Ruth M. Alexander, Major Problems in American Women’s
History, ed., 1996, 2nd ed.
Perry, Claire, Young America: Childhood in 19th Century Art and Culture, exhibition,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006.
Formato
APA
MLA
Chicago
Este servicio bibliográfico de exportación bibliográfica está disponible para las
instituciones que han suscrito a unos de nuestro programas Freemium de OpenEdition.
Si Usted desea que su institución suscriba a uno de nuestros programas Freemium de
OpenEdition y beneficie de sus servicios, por favor escribanos a access@openedition.org.
Riis, Jacob, How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, New
York:
DOI : 10.1037/12986000
Charles Scribner & Sons, 1890
Riis, Jacob, Children of the Poor, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892.
Rosenblum, Naomie, A World History of Photography, New York: Abbeville Press, 3rd ed,
1997.
Spargo, John, The Bitter Cry of the Children, New York, Macmillan, 1906.
Steedman, Carolyn, Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority,
1780–1930, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995.
Szasz, F. M.and Bogardus, R. F., “The Camera and the American Social Conscience: The
Documentary Photography of Jacob Riis,” in New York History (1 October 1974), p. 413.
Welter, Barbara, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 18201860”, American Quarterly, Vol. 18,
No. 2, Part 1 (Summer, 1966), p. 151174, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2711179
Willis, Deborah, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the
Present, New York, Norton and Company, 2002
Online sources:
http://www.theathenaeum.org/
Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/
The Museum of the City of New York, http://collections.mcny.org/C.aspx?
VP3=CMS3&VF=Home
Notas
1 Thomas K. Seligman, in Perry, Claire, Young America: Childhood in 19th Century Art
and Culture, exhibition, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006, foreword, VIII.
2 Perry, Claire, Young America: Childhood in 19th Century Art and Culture, exhibition,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006, p. 3572. One can also refer to Higonnet, Anne,
Pictures of Innocence, the History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood, London, Thames &
Hudson, 1998, who focuses more on British art.
3 Holly Pyne Connor, with contributions by Sarah Burns, Barbara Dayer Gallati, and
Lauren Lessing, Angels and Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th Century American Art, Newark,
N.J.: Newark Museum; San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, 2012.
4 Higonnet, Anne, Pictures of Innocence, the History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood,
London Thames & Hudson, 1998.
5 Lubin, David M., “Guys and Dolls: Framing Femininity in PostCivil War America”,
Chapter 5, in Lubin, David M. Picturing a Nation. Art and Social Change in Nineteenth
Century America, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 205271.
6 Brunet, François, La Naissance de l’idée de photographie. Paris : Presses Universitaires
de France, 2000 ; Brunet, François « Le daguerréotype aux EtatsUnis : un art social »,
L'art de la photographie des origines à nos jours, sous la direction de André Gunthert et
Michel Poivert (coll. L'art et les grandes civilisations), Espagne : Citadelles & Mazenot
2007.
7 Rosenblum, Naomie, A World History of Photography, New York: Abbeville Press, 3rd
ed, 1997.
8 One can quote the works of Sarah McNair Vosmeier, The Family Album: Photography
and American Family Life since 1860, Ph.D., Indiana University, 2003 and Lesme, Anne,
« L’enfant dans la photographie sociale américaine de 1888 à 1941 : enjeux sociaux et
esthétiques », thèse de doctorat, AixMarseille Université, 2012.
9 Zelizer, Viviana A., Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children,
Princeton (N.J.), Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 5.
10 http://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.fr/2013/06/americanabcchildhoodin19th
century.html
11 https://artsy.net/artwork/seymourjosephguycloseyoureyes
12 Lubin, David M. Picturing a Nation. Art and Social Change in NineteenthCentury
America, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 212215.
13
http://www.kevinalfredstrom.com/art/v/paintings/Jonathan+Eastman+Johnson_+Girl+and+pets_+1856.jpg.html
14 Walter Barbara, “The Cult of True Womanhood, 18201860, in “The Cult of
Domesticity”, chapter 5, Major Problems in American Women’s History, ed. Mary Beth
Norton and Ruth M. Alexander, 1996, 2nd ed., p. 115121. See Cogan, Frances B., All
American Girl: The Ideal of Real Womanhood in MidNineteenthCentury America,
Athens: U of Georgia P, 1989.
15 Connor, Holly Pyne, Sarah Burns, Barbara Dayer Gallati, Lauren Lessing, Angels &
Tomboys: Girlhood in 19thCentury American Art, 2012.
16 Connor, Holly Pyne, with contributions by Sarah Burns, Barbara Dayer Gallati, and
Lauren Lessing, Angels and Tomboys: Girlhood in 19th Century American Art, Newark,
N.J.: Newark Museum; San Francisco: Pomegranate Communications, 2012, introduction.
17 Nelson, Claudia and Lynne Vallone (ed), The Girl’s Own: Cultural Histories of the
AngloAmerican Girl, 18301915. Paperback edition, USA, 2010 [1993], p. 9.
18 Perry, Claire, Young America: Childhood in 19th Century Art and Culture, p. 64.
19 http://www.sightswithin.com/Seymour.Joseph.Guy/Girl_and_Kitten.jpg
20 http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=37009
21 http://www.masshist.org/revolution/imageviewer.php?
item_id=1783&mode=small&img_step=1&tpc=
22 Crain, Patricia, “Postures and Places: The Child Reader in NineteenthCentury U.S.
Popular Print”, ELH, Volume 80, Number 2, Summer 2013, p. 343372, Published by The
Johns Hopkins University Press DOI: 10.1353/elh.2013.0020
23 Crain, Patricia, “Postures and Places: The Child Reader in NineteenthCentury U.S.
Popular Print”, p. 349.
24 Crain, Patricia, p. 351.
25 Patricia Crain, referring to Carolyn Steedman, Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the
Idea of Human Interiority, 1780–1930 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), p. 12.
26 Mager, Alison, ed., Children’s Fashion of the Past in Photographs, An Album in 165
Prints, Dover Publications, 1978.
27 Brunet, François, La Naissance de l’idée de photographie. Paris : Presses Universitaires
de France, 2000, ch.4 – Le daguerréotype aux Etats Unis : photographie et démocratie,
p. 157209.
28 McNair Vosmeier, Sarah, The Family Album: Photography and American Family Life
since 1860, Ph.D.,
Indiana University, 2003, p. 150.
29 On can refer to Alice Linddell, by Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll),
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alice_Liddell_2.jpg
30 New York in the Nineteenth Century: 321 Engravings from Harper’s Weekly and
other Contemporary Sources / [compiled by] John Grafton, New York: Dover
Publications, 1977.
31 Szasz, Ference M. and Ralph F. Bogardus. « The Camera and the American Social
Conscience: The Documentary Photography of Jacob A. Riis ». New York History 4
(October 1974), p. 413.
32 http://www.theathenaeum.org/art/detail.php?ID=14106
33 http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/thecollectiononline/search/10976
34 The title of this photograph is not a grammatical oversight but represents the social,
economic status of a deprived child, from an immigrant background with a poor access to
education, hence the grammatical error in the title as if the child herself is speaking.
35 Riis, Jacob, Children of the Poor, New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892, p. 61.
36 Spargo, John, The Bitter Cry of the Children, New York, Macmillan, 1906, p. 14.
37 Riis, who was part of a reform movement, first used lantern slides to illustrate his
lectures on « The Other Half » in front of a Christian audience. One can refer to Riis, Jacob,
How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York, New York: Charles
Scribner & Sons, 1890; Yochelson, Bonnie and Daniel Czitrom, Rediscovering Jacob Riis,
Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turnofthe –Century, New York: The New
Press, 2007; Hales, Peter. « The Hidden Hand: Jacob Riis and the Rethoric of Reform ».
Exposure 20, n°3 (fall 1982): 5258; Stange, Maren, « Jacob Riis and Urban Visual
Culture: The Lantern
Slide Exhibition as Entertainment and Ideology », Journal of Urban History, vol.15, n°3,
1987: 74303.
38 For example: Thomas Waterman Wood, Indian Boy at Fort Snelling (Little Crow),
1862; George Catlin, Tchaaeskading, Grandson of Buffalo Bull’s Back Fat, 1832; George
Catlin, Osceola NickANoChee, a Boy (Seminole), 1840; John Mix Stanley, Young Chief
Uncas, 1870.
39 For example: Alfred Jacob Miller, Breaking Up Camp at Sunrise, c. 1845 ; Albert
Bierstadt, Indians Traveling Near Fort Laramie, c.1859 ; Seth Eastman, Indian Mode of
Travelling, 18671869.
40 For example: Paul Frenzeny and Jules Tavernier, « Two Bits to See the Papoose, » from
Harper’s Weekly, October 24, 1874.
41 http://arthistorynewsreport.blogspot.fr/2013/06/americanabcchildhoodin19th
century.html
42 http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=46267
43 Perry, Claire, Young America: Childhood in 19th Century Art and Culture, p. 78.
44 http://www.artnet.com/artists/lillymartinspencer/heightoffashion
uB2f0VI0ECpOA_4RBdUZ8Q2
45 http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/var.1783/
46 http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/threesistersofthecopelandfamily33213
47 Willis, Deborah, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the
Present, New York, Norton and Company, 2002: “Part I : the first sixty years, 1840
1900” p. 315.
48 Mager, Alison, ed., Children’s Fashion of the Past in Photographs, An Album in 165
Prints, Dover Publications, 1978. Two photographs out of a hundred and sixty four (1860s
1920s), n°49 and n°138 are of black children, a portrait of two boys and a portrait of a girl.
49 Koenig, Thilo, « Voyage de l’autre côté. L’enquête sociale », in Frizot, M. (dir.), Nouvelle
Histoire de la photographie, Paris, BordasAdam Biro, 1995, p. 352.
50 Nelson, Claudia and Lynne Vallone (ed), The Girl’s Own: Cultural Histories of the
AngloAmerican Girl, 18301915, Paperback edition, USA, 2010 [1993], p. 5.
Índice de ilustraciones
Título Fig. 1 – John George Brown, Resting in the Wood (1866)
http://nuevomundo.revues.org/docannexe/image/67429/img
URL
1.jpg
Ficheros image/jpeg, 132k
Título Fig. 2 – Seymour J. Guy, Temptation (1884)
URL
2.jpg
Título Fig. 3 – Seymour J. Guy, Gathering Flowers (1861)
URL
3.jpg
Título Fig. 4 – Seymour J. Guy, Making Believe (1870)
URL
4.jpg
Título Fig. 5 – Seymour J. Guy, Making a Train (1867)
URL
5.jpg
Fig. 6 – Seymour J. Guy, Girl with Canary (The New Arrival)
Título
(1860)
URL
6.jpg
Título Fig. 7 – Seymour J. Guy, Unconscious of Danger (1865)
URL
7.jpg
Fig. 8 – John G. Brown, Three Girls on A Swing – The Three
Título
Tomboys (1868)
URL
8.jpg
8.jpg
Título Fig. 9 – Winslow Homer, The Country School (1873)
URL
9.jpg
Título Fig. 10 – Seymour J. Guy, An interesting Book
URL
10.jpg
Título Fig. 11 – Seymour J. Guy, Young Girl Reading (1877)
URL
11.jpg
Título Fig. 12 – John G. Brown, A Leisure Hour – First Reader (1881)
URL
12.jpg
Título Fig. 13 – Seymour J. Guy’s Story of Golden Locks (1870)
URL
13.jpg
Título Fig. 14 – John G. Brown, Buy a Posy, 1881
URL
14.jpg
Título Fig. 15 – John G. Brown, The Flower girl (1877)
URL
15.jpg
Título Fig. 16 – John G. Brown, The Crossing Sweeper (1874)
URL
16.jpg
Título Fig. 17 – John G. Brown’s The Little Servant (1886)
URL
17.jpg
Título Fig. 18 – John G. Brown, Tête à Tête (18881890)
URL
18.jpg
Fig. 19 – Jacob Riis, “I Scrubs”, Little Katie from the W. 52nd
Título
St. Industrial School (since moved to W. 53rd St.3)
Créditos From the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York
URL
19.jpg
Título Fig. 20 – Jacob Riis, Minding the Baby, ‘A little mother’
URL
20.jpg
Fig. 21 – Jacob Riis, Little Susie at Her Work,Gotham Court
Título
(1890)
URL http://nuevomundo.revues.org/docannexe/image/67429/img
21.jpg
Título Fig. 22 – Jacob Riis, Saluting the Flag
URL
22.jpg
Título Fig. 23 – Henry Ossawa Tanner, The Banjo Lesson, 1893
URL
23.jpg
Fig. 24 – Eastman Johnson, Negro Life in the South (Kentucky
Título
Home), 1859
URL
24.jpg
Fig. 25 – Jacob Riis, The board of election inspectors in the
Título
beach street school (1892)
URL
25.jpg
Para citar este artículo
Referencia electrónica
Anne Lesme, « Depiction of 19th Century American Girls in Paintings and Photographs:
Lack of Agency and Empowerment », Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos [En línea],
Coloquios, Puesto en línea el 26 noviembre 2014, consultado el 28 enero 2016. URL :
http://nuevomundo.revues.org/67429 ; DOI : 10.4000/nuevomundo.67429
Autor
Anne Lesme
LERMA, Aix Marseille Université,
anne.lesme@univamu.fr
Derechos de autor
© Tous droits réservés

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31 Interestingly enough, during their campaign, the Abolitionists produced

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