Fotoreproductie van een liggend kind dat op een fluit speelt door Albert Hendschel before 1870

This photogravure of a drawing by Albert Hendschel was printed by Theodor Huth in Frankfurt. It shows a child, likely a boy, relaxing near a pond and playing a flute to some ducklings. The image evokes a Romantic sensibility, idealizing rural innocence, and a life lived in harmony with nature. This aesthetic chimes well with the social realities of the rapidly industrializing German states of the nineteenth century. On one level, the image sentimentalizes childhood, but the very act of representing this boy in the act of making music speaks to an understanding of art’s civilizing function. The printing press was vital in disseminating these ideas. The publishers F.A.C Prestel are based in Frankfurt, Germany, and specialized in prints like this that served to educate and edify a wide bourgeois audience. To understand the original cultural context of this image we might consult periodicals, newspapers, and books of the period that explore how such imagery operated within the marketplace of ideas. In this way, we can appreciate the power of art to engage with a changing world.