Dead Child On a Sofa
1855
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1855
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Dead Child On a Sofa is a 1855 by Unknown, a Impressionism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a small, faded photograph of a child lying on a fancy sofa, dressed in white with flowers on their chest. This was a common way to remember children who died young in the 1800s. The artist added pink to the cheeks to make the child look like they’re just sleeping. It feels strange to us now, but back then, this was a way to keep a memory alive. To see more images like this, look up the subject america.
This carefully staged daguerreotype of a dead child is an outstanding example of a very common subject: the postmortem portrait. Using the stylistic conventions of the day, the unidentified artist successfully created a visually pleasing scene, despite the nature of the image. Dressed in white with a bouquet of flowers on the chest, the child, seen in profile, reclines on an elaborately patterned sofa. Delicate flesh tones were added to the cheek and arm, suggestive of a healthy child sleeping. The high rate of infant mortality throughout the 19th century made this variety of portraiture…
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