Existing comment:
Grymes children
This group portrait is one of the most interesting and appealing images to survive from colonial America. It speaks loudly and clearly about gentry children and family in colonial Virginia. It is evidence that at early ages children were instructed in manners, dressed as genteel adults, and so groomed to perpetuate family status in a highly structured society.
Whoever the artist, probably the young John Hesselius, he was bold and inventive. To fit four figures in this composition, he devised an imaginary landscape pieced together with the types of imagery found in the backgrounds of English portrait prints. The result is more charming that awkward, an image of an English life-style. As such, the painting no doubt satisfied its Middlesex County patrons.
Comparison of this painting with an English portrait of the FitzPatrick children, c. 1752–53, by George Knapton, shows remarkable similarities. Not only do London-produced costumes and behavior patterns repeat, but so too does the extraordinary toy wagon, a product of new, permissive attitudes about childrearing. From the evidence of this painting, gentry society in England and Virginia were in fact more similar than we might be inclined to believe. At the least, that was the goal of Virginia parents.
The four eldest children of Phillip Grymes (1721-1762) of Brandon, Middlesex County, are shown in this c. 1750 portrait, probably by John Hesselius. The three eldest children are dressed as genteel adults who already have been taught to act in accordance with their social status and assigned gender roles. The roles of the youngest child, and his extraordinary toy wagon, are evidence of a change in attitude toward children. In the 1600s, children were seen as mischievous, even dangerous little animals susceptible to being instruments of Satan. In the 1700s, however, childhood was becoming seen as an innocent, blessed stage of human development. The American Revolution divided this happy family. Lucy Grymes (on the left) married Thomas Nelson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The brother next to her, John Randolph Grymes, became a Loyalist who fought for the British. |