• Title
  [Child in carrying cloak, ca. 1850]
• Call number
  ML 1351
  Status: On display – Paintings from the Collection, Room 3, West Wall, no. 209
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  [ca. 1850]
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Paintings
• Reference code
  442139
• Issue Copy
  Digitised
• Physical Description
  1 painting - oil on board - 30.8 x 40.8 cm. (image within mount, site) ; 32.2 x 42.1 cm. (mount) ; 46.5 x 56 cm. (frame)
  
• Scope and Content
  The painting depicts an interior view of a drawing room, with a child resting on a sofa, and two framed landscape paintings hung in the background. The child, who is about seven months old, wears a blue dress edged in lace underneath a carrying cloak of blue fabric decorated with an ermine cuff and trim. In rectangular wooden frame with gilt inner border and glass front.
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright: Artist died before 1955
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• General note
  
  The painting is not signed nor dated.
  
  The clothing worn by the child is expensive and, combined with the opulent furnishings, reflects the socio-economic position of the family who commissioned this painting.
  
  The pose of the child suggests and is indicative of momento mori objects created as remembrances of our mortality. Painted portraits of young children and babies wearing these cloaks are rare as indeed are death portraits of babies and children, hitherto mainly the domain of photography. The painting probably dates from the 1850's and is unusual because it departs from the context of conventional portraiture depicting a young child without other family members. Additionally, if the child in this portrait is deceased, the theme is unusual for colonial art. The painting is therefore significant as a comment on nineteenth century attitudes towards childhood and infant mortality. -- Curator of Pictures (Research), Sept. 2004
  Digital order no:a128980
• Topic
  children
  cloaks
  colonial art
  death & dying (humans)
  interiors (buildings)
  
• Exhibited in
  
  Paintings from the Collection - State Library of New South Wales (2018)
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE9482810

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