Girl with Eggs and Geese n.d.

Kate Greenaway, a popular late 19th-century English artist, made this watercolor, "Girl with Eggs and Geese." Greenaway gained fame for her children’s book illustrations, which often depicted idealized visions of childhood. The girl here, in her vaguely historical costume, exists within a quaint village scene. But this wasn’t simply about illustrating a narrative, it was about shaping desires. Greenaway’s images contributed to a broader cultural trend of sentimentalizing rural life, at a time when industrialization and urbanization were rapidly changing English society. This wasn’t necessarily about preserving the past, but about creating an appealing, marketable vision of it. Historians delve into popular periodicals, books, and even advertising from the period to understand the cultural meanings that pictures like this would have carried. By understanding these contexts, we gain insight into the social functions of art.