Mother and Children Reading, by Arthur Boyd Houghton (1836-1875)

Mother and Children Reading

Arthur Boyd Houghton (1836-1875)

Oil on canvas

c.1860

Oil on canvas

Support: 305 x 248 mm

Collection: Tate

Presented by Mrs E. C. Davis 1926

Reference: N04151

This looks like one of Houghton's "charming paintings of family life" (Lambourne 371), a domestic scene bathed in the rosy glow of his own happy childhood, and just saved from sentimentality by its various realistic details. [Commentary continues below; mouse over the text for links.]

Image kindly released by the Tate under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) license.

The children's toys are scattered on the chair and floor to the left: carved animals, probably from a Noah's Ark, on the chair, a picture-book lying open on the floor, with a tilted, barrel-bodied wooden horse just beside it. The little girl grasps a frazzle-haired doll, and holds some small thing – it looks like the chain of a silver pocket-watch, perhaps her father's — to her mouth. The bright reds of the painting, on the curtain and the little boy's jumper, also give it a natural, cheerful atmosphere. But the woman herself is unmistakably dressed in mourning, and behind her sits an older man, probably her father, reading his newspaper. It is likely that she is a widow, perhaps living with her parents again. This possibility makes the painting, including the little girl's attachment to the pocket-watch, unexpectedly poignant. — Jacqueline Banerjee (with thanks to Winchester Bookshop @winchester_Bookshop on Twitter for suggesting that the small object in the girl's hand is a watch).

Bibliography

Lambourne, Lionel. Victorian Painting. London and New York: Phaidon, 1999.

Last modified 1 June 2018