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Imaging childhood in eighteenth-century France: Greuze's Little Girl with a Dog

This article discusses a hitherto neglected work by an important French artist and sheds light on a much debated topic, the changing image and idea of childhood in the eighteenth century. It challenges conventional accounts that explain developments in terms of a new belief in childhood innocence, arguing that a more fundamental role was played by the emergence of child welfare as a social issue. The first sustained scholarly treatment of this topic to focus on French rather than British art, it draws on medical and scientific discourse, and brings together a wide array of images, many never before published or discussed.

It is an extended article that makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the historical construction of childhood. In demonstrating how eighteenth-century images of children were shaped by anxieties about their vulnerability to exploitation and abuse, it shows that such anxieties were integral to the modern conception of childhood right from the outset. Its findings therefore open up new avenues of investigation not just for art historians but for cultural and social historians as well. It also offers historical insights of relevance to childhood studies in the social sciences.

This article is based on detailed research and is supported by 22 illustrations. It involved extensive picture research into works in public and private collections in Britain, France, Russia and the United States. It draws on primary source material as well as relevant secondary literature from across the disciplines of art history, philosophy, history, history of science and cultural studies.