Gender in children's portraits

Magazine Antiques, August, 1995 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

Some of the most charming and colorful folk paintings are portraits of children, but are these children boys or girls? Because of the similarity of children's attire in the nineteenth century, it is often difficult to say. An exhibition and its catalogue address this issue and shed light on attributes that help distinguish one sex from the other. Is She or Isn't He? Identifying Gender in Folk Portraits of Children is on view at the Heritage Plantation of Sandwich in Sandwich, Massachusetts, until October 29. It includes some seventy-five works by such notable artists as John Brewster, Ruth Henshaw Bascom, Horace Bundy, Joseph Whiting Stock, and William Matthew Prior, along with a selection of toys and clothing from the period. The works were selected from the nearly fourteen hundred portraits examined in person or in photographs by the curator of the exhibition, Jennifer A. Yunginger.

The portraits evaluated were executed between 1800 and 1865--a period of significant change in the attitudes toward child rearing, from dress and appropriate toys to guidelines for successful parenting. Yunginger has divided her study into relevant categories: setting, clothing, hair style, and props. Her findings confirmed both oral and art historical traditions about gender in American folk portraits and exploded some of the myths that have pervaded the field. Of all the portraits she studied, 361 are documented as representing girls and 317 are known to depict boys. These were used to create criteria for the attributes of each sex as depicted by the folk artist.

Within the first category of setting it has long been held that girls are more commonly depicted in interiors than boys, and while this has proven to be true, it is by no means universally so. Children are depicted out-of-doors in substantially fewer quantities than those in interiors, and it is believed that even when children are shown in a landscape, the paintings were actually executed indoors, since plein-air painting was a development of the later nineteenth century.

As early as 1690 John Locke encouraged playing outside as a healthful exercise for children. Strenuous exercise was more often suggested for boys than girls, but by 1831 Lydia Child wrote that girls should engage in "gardening, sliding, skating, and snowballing" (in the company of family members, not in public).

While logically clothing would seem the best way to distinguish boys from girls, this was not the case in nineteenth-century America. At an early age, girls I and boys were similarly attired in dresses, although occasional differences in the collar, fit, and accessories enable one to assign a gender with confidence. After about 1780 girls wore loose-fitting, high-waisted white muslin dresses--a fashion that prevailed until the 1820's. Pantaloons were introduced in America about 1803 and became traditional undergarments for both boys and girls. Between 1800 and 1830, boys wore dresses until they were about four years old, at which time they donned what was called a skeleton suit (a pair of short trousers that buttoned to a short jacket). This rite of passage was known as breaching. By the age of seven boys were dressed like men in a jacket and trousers. By 1830 the skeleton suit was supplanted by the belted tunic, which was often slit from the waist to the hem. It was generally worn from the age of six, and by eight, boys began wearing jackets and trousers.

An excellent indicator of gender is jewelry, which appears in much greater quantity in folk portraits of girls. Infrequently, boys are shown wearing necklaces or rings.

The majority of girls are shown with their hair parted in the center, while boys' hair is more usually parted on the side or has no part at all. However, by about 1860 boys also began to part their hair in the center.

As the nineteenth century progressed, children were more frequently painted with props such as pets, games, toys, sewing accessories, flowers and plants, fruit, nuts, and tools. In all cases, props are appropriate to the sex of the sitter. Some actually belonged to the subject of the portrait while others were supplied by the artist. Girls are four times more likely than boys to be shown with flowers. Boys more often hold dogs and girls cradle cats. (Owning pets became more popular during the course of the nineteenth century, since it came to be believed that it taught children responsibility and kindness.) There is no significant difference in the number of boys or girls depicted with books, and so one cannot generalize about differences in literacy between the sexes.

As writers came to promote creative play and encourage parents to allow their children to enjoy their youth rather than behave as miniature adults, children began being depicted with greater numbers of toys. Not surprisingly, girls hold dolls while boys are shown with pull toys and such tools as hammers and nails. An interesting finding of this study is that boys were apparently allowed more latitude in their choice of toys than girls were.