As a result, I found that Reynolds s artistic development embodies the establishment of the innocent and content child in visual art. Rousseau’s Èmile is a kind of half treatise, half novel that tells the life story of a fictional man named Èmile. I therefore explore in what ways Rousseau s writings in Emile, knowingly and unknowingly, are present in Reynolds s joyful and tender renderings of children. Reynolds and Rousseau both affected their time greatly, and it is likely that their paths have crossed. I aim at investigating the relations between The Discourses on Art and Reynolds s paintings of children and as a result promote Reynolds as a conveyer of the different aspects and sentiments of childhood.
In this thesis, I will analyse Reynolds s painting The Strawberry Girl, 1772-73, as well as a selection of Reynolds s paintings of children.
Furthermore, Rousseau emphasized childhood by letting the child explore the world on its own terms. This led to a perception of childhood as a happy and content phase of life. In Emile, Rousseau abandons original sin. A close reading of The Discourses on Art reveals that Reynolds thought art should seek a general truth, and that art should make an impression on the beholder s imagination and feeling. AbstractPictures of Childhood is a study of Sir Joshua Reynolds s paintings of children in light of Reynolds s The Discourses on Art, 1769-1790, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau s Emile, or On Education, 1762.
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