Mother Caressing Her Convalescant Daughter 1818

Charles Willson Peale created this painting of a mother and daughter, sometime in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. It's a tender, domestic scene that tells us something about how the institution of the family was changing at this time. In this painting, we see not just a straightforward depiction, but also a visual encoding of social values. The closeness of mother and daughter, their gentle expressions, and the daughter’s physical vulnerability were all important sentimental ideals within the emerging middle class in America. Peale, who ran his own natural history museum, was part of this class, which was beginning to value private life, domesticity, and the emotional bonds of the family. To truly understand an image like this, we need to consider how it participated in shaping social values. By studying things like conduct manuals, letters, and other visual imagery, we can understand the role of art as part of America’s cultural and social history.