‘Boating’

[Victorian Web Home —> Visual Arts —> Illustrators —> Kate Greenaway —> Next]

‘Boating’

Kate Greenaway (1846-1901)

1879

7¾ x 5¾ inches

Coloured wood-block engraving by Edmund Evans

Under the Window, 45

Another of Greenaway’s scenes of children at leisurely play. To a large extent her work conforms to the stereotypical expectation of female artists in a period when women were judged only to be able to produce images of beautiful subjects – youngsters, flowers and landscapes – and her imagery of childhood is essentially decorative; interestingly, she never married and had no children of her own. [Commentary continues below.]

Scan, text and formatting by Simon Cooke.

[You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the source and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print document. Click on the image for a larger picture.]

With that in mind, it is perhaps predictable that she emphasises the infants’ innocence as they pursue their interests in a rural paradise, itself a symbol of purity and goodness. Perpetually spring or summer time, nature reflects the children’s growing as if they were seedlings, buds or blossoms. The extent of Greenaway’s idealism is embodied in this design. Pretty is certainly is, but must surely strike terror into the heart of any parent; tellingly, very few adults appear in her designs, and her characters are almost always unsupervised. Only the poem (written by Greenaway and polished by Frederick Locker-Lampson) gives any hint of parental anxiety: ‘Fathers may scold … Mothers may cry’. Such warnings are unheeded, nonetheless, as if celebrating a freedom that nursery readers could only aspire to.

Bibliography

Greenaway, Kate. Under the Window. London: George Routledge, 1879.

Created 14 June 2021