Boy in a Landscape

A confident pose marks this young sitter as a fearless boy who is comfortable in the out-of-doors. In mid-nineteenth-century America, society expected different things from boys and girls. Childhood was seen as an important stage in life when girls were encouraged to learn lessons of self-sacrifice and service, while boys were urged to be daring and aggressive. Contemporary books and images portrayed the American boy as fun-loving and independent. After the Civil War, the image of healthy, happy children became even more important to a nation shaken by the loss of its own innocence and confidence (Mintz, Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood, 2004; Clapper, “I Was Once a Barefoot Boy!”: Cultural Tensions in a Popular Chromo,” American Art, Summer 2002).