Label Text:
With a direct gaze suggestive of self-assurance, the boy—wearing neat, clean rural attire, and holding a weathered straw hat in his right hand—meets the viewer’s eye. Sitting with his left hand in his pants' pocket, he appears enviably carefree. Firmly modeled by Cafferty and filling up much of the composition's space, he is evidently strong and healthy, although still too young for his feet to reach the ground. The water jug in the lower-right corner suggests his easy access to life’s basic necessities.
In mid-nineteenth-century Anglo-American culture, the barefoot boy signified nostalgia for childhood and the presumed simplicity of country life. Such images often adorned the homes of bourgeois city-dwellers as (largely imagined) reminders of a more humble, authentic past.
Written by Timothy Clark, Class of 2012
American Art Intern, Spring 2010
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+1978.70 |
