The Lesson

Hugo Ballin loved music and liked to play the piano when he was not painting. In this image the teacher plays a portative organ and her student follows on a flute. Before the ruptures of the First World War, middle-class American families still aspired to a nineteenth-century ideal of gentility. Children, particularly girls, were encouraged to study art and music as part of their upbringing. The dark, richly patterned background of this painting evokes a luxurious tapestry, reflecting the cultivated life of young ladies at the turn of the twentieth century.