Description
| Year: | 1892 |
| Original size: | 67 cm x 52 cm |
| Painting style: | Naive art (primitivism), post-impressionist period |
| Original technique: | Oil on canvas |
| Located at: | Musée de l’Orangerie (Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection), Paris, France |
The Child with the Doll is a work by the painter Henri Rousseau, oil on canvas, painted in 1892. The original measures 67 cm x 52 cm and is in the collection of Musée de l’Orangerie (Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume Collection), Paris, France (inv. RF 1963-29). The picture shows: a child in a red spotted dress holds a doll and a white flower, standing in a green field of red and white flowers.
The Child with the Doll – a hand-painted reproduction
A pale blue sky at the top fades almost to white at the horizon; below it a green field
fills the lower half, scattered with small red flowers and white daisy-like ones on dark
stems. A child stands in the middle of the picture facing the viewer and takes up nearly all
of it, the head very large in proportion to the body. Fair straight hair with a fringe is cut
level with the jaw. The round pale face has rosy cheeks, large dark-lashed eyes, dark brows
and a small closed mouth. The child wears a red dress covered in small white dots, with a
broad rounded collar edged in scalloped white, long sleeves and red cuffs; the dress ends
above the knee, and below it bare pink legs go down into tan boots reaching mid-calf. In one
arm the child holds a doll upright against the chest: short dark hair, a pale face with large
blue eyes and pink cheeks, and a plain pale grey long-sleeved garment. The other hand holds a
single white daisy-like flower with a yellow centre on a green stem. At the lower right, on
the grass among the flowers, is the dark signature H. J. Rousseau.
A head larger than the body
The first thing the eye registers is not the dress but a proportion: the head is painted
far larger than it would be in life, and that is exactly why the picture reads as serious
rather than sweet. The painter neither prettifies the child nor makes it smile – the look is
level and straight ahead. The same handling appears in Child with Puppet (To Celebrate the Baby), where another child is likewise
set in the centre and likewise looks out.
A red note on a green field
In colour the canvas is built from two areas: the green field and the red dress, and
between them the white dots on the dress and the white flowers in the grass repeat the same
small mark. That is why the child does not stand in front of the landscape but is tied into
it. Who is portrayed we do not claim: the record gives a title and nothing else – no name, no
age, no relation to the painter. The Italian record label calls the child a girl where the
French and English titles do not; since the picture does not settle it, neither do we. Other
family subjects by the same hand are The Family and Portrait of the Father of the Artist.
What it means on the wall
The original measures 67 cm x 52 cm and is upright. Because it is a single central figure
against a quiet background it works well at smaller sizes too; larger ones bring out the white
dots on the dress, the doll’s face and the separate flowers in the grass. We do not reproduce
canvases at the original measurement; you choose the size for your wall. For the opposite
case, a wide scene with no figure, see View of the Bridge at Sèvres.
How a hand-painted reproduction is made
Every canvas is painted by hand in oils, to order, in the size you choose. The painter
works from a high-resolution photograph of the original, layer by layer, so that the white
dots on the dress, the scalloped collar and the doll’s face stay legible at smaller sizes too.
Because this is hand work, two canvases of the same size always differ slightly; that is not a
fault but the difference between a painting and a print. Prices on this page start at 155
EUR for the smallest size.
