The image shows a young child standing next to a rocking horse. The child is standing upright with one hand resting on the rocking horse's head and the other hand holding a whip. The child has fair skin, blue eyes, and short blonde hair with a small curl at the top. The child wears an orange dress with floral patterns, white lace-trimmed pantaloons, white stockings, and black shoes. The background includes red drapery on the left side and a bright landscape visible through a window, as well as a deep green hue on the right side.

Child with Rocking Horse

American 19th Century

The image shows a young child standing next to a rocking horse. The child is standing upright with one hand resting on the rocking horse's head and the other hand holding a whip. The child has fair skin, blue eyes, and short blonde hair with a small curl at the top. The child wears an orange dress with floral patterns, white lace-trimmed pantaloons, white stockings, and black shoes. The background includes red drapery on the left side and a bright landscape visible through a window, as well as a deep green hue on the right side.

Colors in this work

Details

Date
c. 1850
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 103.2 x 68.6 cm (40 5/8 x 27 in.) framed: 125.1 x 90.8 x 7.3 cm (49 1/4 x 35 3/4 x 2 7/8 in.)
Department
CAB
Holding institution
National Gallery of Art
Image provider
national-gallery-of-art
License
CC0-1.0
Credit
Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch

Art Genome Taxonomy

8 tags

Subject Matter

  • Individual Portrait Visual · 98%

    A single child is the dominant, centrally posed subject, presented frontally and at full length in a portrait-like composition.

  • Childhood Both · 99%

    The image shows a young child, and the catalog description explicitly identifies the subject as a young child.

Visual Qualities

  • Bright and Vivid Colors Visual · 98%

    Saturated orange, red, teal-green, white, and dark blue-black passages create a strongly vivid color scheme.

Medium and Techniques

  • Painting Both · 99%

    The catalog classifies the work as a painting, and the image visibly presents a painted, vertically oriented portrait scene.

  • Oil Painting Metadata · 100%

    The catalog records the medium as oil on canvas.

Time Periods

Geographic Regions

  • American Art Metadata · 90%

    The catalog identifies the artist as American 19th Century, supporting a broad American-art classification.

Tableware, Vessels, and Objects

  • Toy Both · 100%

    A rocking horse occupies a substantial portion of the composition and is explicitly identified in the title and catalog description as a central object.

Source & rights

American 19th Century. Child with Rocking Horse. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

High-resolution sources