Seymour Joseph Guy - The Contest for the Bouquet, The Family of RobertGordon in Their New York Dining-Room [1866]

Seymour Joseph Guy - The Contest for the Bouquet, The Family of Robert Gordon in Their New York Dining-Room [1866], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

A British-born financier, an art collector, and a founding trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gordon ordered this portrait, which shows his family in their home on West Thirty-third Street. He is absent from the scene, but his presence permeates it, even in the setting: the dining room, which was considered a male domain in contrast to the more feminine space of the parlour. The oldest boy's competitive grab for the prize suggests that he will be prepared to follow in his successful father's footsteps. His sister reaches for the bouquet but observes feminine propriety. The younger boy, who has adventurously climbed on a chair, mimics his older brother. The little girl seeks safety from the commotion on her mother's lap. Frances Burton Gordon, an observant but marginal actor in the scene, signals the watchful maternal influence that was increasingly fashionable in parenting after the Civil War.

[Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York - Oil on canvas, 62.5 x 74.9 cm]

Seymour Joseph Guy - Story of Golden Locks [c.1870]

Seymour Joseph Guy - Story of Golden Locks [c.1870], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

Guy (American, 1824 – 1910) made a career of painting popular sentimental narratives with preadolescent girls as the protagonists. In this canvas, a girl reads the titular story to two little boys, presumably her brothers. Her menacing shadow on the attic bedroom's wall and the boys' wide eyes suggest that she is recounting the story's most frightening moment. Fairy tales were appreciated for their moral content at this time, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears was valued as warning children not to wander off on their own. Later interpreters of the tale, including the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, have read in it a girl's fraught search for identity as she makes the transition from girlhood to womanhood. Guy's girl presents this very paradox - she creates a foreboding mood as she exudes calm and purity, which foretells her future success as a mother. Her doll is tucked into the box on the chair, which implies that she is ready to put away childhood games and assume an adult role.

[Oil on canvas, 86.4 x 71.1 cm]

Seymour Joseph Guy - Making A Train [1867]

Seymour Joseph Guy - Making A Train [1867], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.

In the same attic room that Guy (American, 1824 – 1910) portrayed in Story of Golden Locks, a girl turns her bedtime preparations into a flight of fancy as she imagines herself in the womanly splendour of a long gown. The narrative reflects the new belief that play and leisure were good for children, rather than wicked, and confirms feminine stereotypes at a time when womanhood seemed to be under attack by militant feminists. Reformers of the day, who worried about dirty and delinquent street children, may have appreciated the depiction of a clean, healthy, white girl in a modest home. The red, white, and blue triad, in the quilt and in the girl's dress, chemise, and headband, signals the subject's national implications. The commingling of sexual allure and girlish innocence was prevalent in Guy's era, as seen in photographs by Lewis Carroll and Julia Margaret Cameron.

[Oil on canvas, 46 x 61.3 cm]