Chasing cultural capital butterflies with children

Earlier this year, The Guardian (2023) proffered a pessimistic view that English state schools were confronting “a creativity crisis”. This, they argued, reflected the government’s utilitarian (nothing but facts) outlook. Not only were state schools facing hard times, as far as access to the arts were concerned, the cultural horizons for state educated children was akin to artistic anti-growth.

The prognosis for art education, in state education, is bleak. This alone, presents a serious challenge for school leaders seeking to enrich children’s learning through the experience of the arts. It is an even greater challenge when Ofsted’s cultural capital gaze is splodged onto the curriculum palette.

So, where to begin? In my view, an excellent starting point for the development of children’s essential knowledge and appreciation of the world of art would be Thomas Gainsborough’s c.1756 painting, The Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly, held at The National Gallery, London.   

Painting children is tricky

As educators, we know teaching children presents many challenges – maintaining their attention, for one. For painters trying to capture the likeness of a child for their portrait, especially so. This helps to explain why paintings of children prior to The Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly look unnatural, awkward, and stiff: painted children seemingly resemble small adults exemplified by William Hogarth’s The Graham Children (1742). 

In contrast, Gainsborough’s work scrubs the previous ‘child as a small adult’ convention. Instead, he skilfully reimagines, and paints afresh, the child as a child, not as a mini-adult. This is because the painting is his own. It is not constricted by the requirements of a patron’s commission. As such, Gainsborough has the freedom, and enjoyment, to paint his daughters as he saw them, physically and emotionally.

This helps to explain why his daughters, Mary and Margaret (reaching toward the butterfly), look so familiar to us. We feel like we know these children. This is because the children look and act like children in the way we imagine children to be.

The painting’s philosophical importance for childhood

Historically, this image is significant because Gainsborough’s brushstrokes chart a shift in British society’s perception of children and childhood. By the mid-eighteenth century, the time of The Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly’s production, dominant Puritan ideas concerning children’s innate sinfulness, requiring adult control and correction, were being challenged philosophically.

Influenced by English philosopher John Locke’s 1693 writing on Some Thoughts Concerning Education, which argued against Puritan thinking on children’s nature and instead presented the position that children were born as “white paper or wax to be moulded and fashioned as one pleases,” a different way of thinking about children and childhood gained ground. “Children came to be associated with a set of positive meanings and attributes” during this time, advances Kimberley Reynolds (2014). Gainsborough’s painting chronicles this new thinking.  

Flowing from the image, we can observe Gainsborough's artistry experimenting with these new ideas about children’s nature and development. As we view the painting, we are, in effect, witnessing a new childhood paradigm emerging, similar to a metamorphosised butterfly struggling to free itself from the cocoon’s constraints. Imbued within the painting’s imagery then, Gainsborough registers these unfurling wings of change.

Over time, these ideas, concerning the child and childhood, which emanated during the 1700s and presented through art, have managed to embed themselves deeply into society. So deeply, in fact, it feels inconceivable to reimagine childhoods devoid of freedom, spontaneity, emotion and innocence. 

One final point, worth noting, relates to another layer of meaning held within the image, propositioned by art critic, Jonathan Jones (2018). Jones considers that Locke’s ideas about the sensory way in which children learn about the world is being pondered over by Gainsborough, as well.

Furthermore, I would add that another Lockean idea is present: children should be thought of as individuals in their own right. This image, then, is not just a father’s loving portrayal of a moment in time in his daughter’s progression along their childhood path, it also an artistic contemplation 

How to use the image with children

Art appreciation follows a straightforward two-step process: description followed by interpretation. 

First, invite children to offer a description of the image perhaps drawing their attention to the difference in expression, costume and movement between Mary and Margaret.

Second, invite children to interpret or explain the difference in expression, costume and movement between Mary and Margaret.

Some 'why' questions to ask

Why is Margaret reaching for the butterfly?

Why is Mary guiding her sister away from the butterfly?

Why is Margaret’s facial expression different to that of her sister’s?

Why is Mary holding her apron over her shoulder?

Why is Mary looking beyond the butterfly?

Why are the children’s dresses different in colour?

Butterfly effects

Knowledge and appreciation of art is, in my view, a fundamental component of children’s development of cultural capital. Access to art must not be restricted to a privileged few. The American philosopher, John Dewey ([1934] 2005), once opined that art has the power to both liberate and unite because it hints at the “possibilities of humans relations not to be found in rule and percept, admonition and administration.”  If that is the case then, Art’s powerful butterfly effects should be experienced by all, including children.

A low-resolution image of The Painter’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly by Thomas Gainsborough is availablefor educational use on the National Gallery website. 

A low-resolution image of The Grantham Children by William Hogarth is available for educational use on the National Gallery website.