1897, James McNeill Whistler, Chelsea Children [watercolor] -- National Museum of Asian Art (Washington)

From the museum label: Victorian reformers promoted art and education as paths toward economic betterment for poor and working-class Britons. At the Royal Academy in 1863, Whistler encountered William MacDuff's painting Shaftsbury (Lost and Found), in which a boy points out a portrait of the seventh Lord Shaftsbury, Anthony Ashley-Cooper, nicknamed "the poor man's Earl." Ashley-Cooper devoted his life to promoting education for disadvantaged children, and the gesturing youngster wears the uniform of a school the Earl helped found. In Chelsea Children, Whistler sidestepped such a specific political narrative, transforming the trope of figures peering into shop windows into an invitation for his viewers simply to look. Children cluster before a window filled with works of art. One child stands apart, gazing into a neighboring fishmonger's shop under a sign reading "Stewed Eels," an inexpensive dish associated with London's poor residents. The appeal of curious children helped sanitize the threat the urban poor seemed to pose to middle- and upper-class urbanites.

 

Link to other paintings from the exhibition Whistler: Streetscapes, Urban Change.

 

Link to other Whistler paintings.

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