Portrait Of A Young Girl 1874

Léon Bazile Perrault painted this “Portrait of a Young Girl” in France, sometime in the mid-19th century. Perrault specialised in sentimental genre scenes, often featuring children, intended to appeal to the bourgeois art market. This image creates meaning through established visual codes and cultural references. The girl is dressed in what was considered traditional peasant clothing. The clothing signifies poverty, and an associated set of virtues about closeness to the land and traditional society. It’s important to note the way Parisian artists like Perrault idealised rural life, particularly as the industrial revolution transformed urban centres. By sentimentalising the peasantry, Perrault’s paintings may have encouraged conservative social attitudes. To fully understand paintings like these, we need to see them in their wider institutional and cultural context. Auction records, art criticism, and sociological studies of the period can all provide insights. The meaning of art depends upon its social and institutional context.