Painting Detail
Children with a ParrotArtist: Christina Robertson
Medium: Painting, Oil on canvas, 112x104 cm
Date: 1850
Genre: Portrait
Source: Leningrad State Purchasing Commission, 1938
Christina Robertson lived and worked in Russia between 1840 and the early 1850s. This is one of her best works, although sadly the identity of the children has not been established. These tidy, obedient, charming children clearly belong to the higher ranks of society; the boy wears the uniform of St Petersburg's prestigious Corps de Pages while the girl holds a large coloured talking macaw, then an extremely rare bird. The landscape in which they sit is perhaps their family park or estate; the flat landscape with its low, white-stone church and tent-roofed bell-tower is typical of much of central Russia. Such intimate portraits, finely executed and openly idealizing the sitters, were popular with the Russian aristocracy. They followed the example of the Russian imperial family in showering the Scottish artist with commissions, forgiving her the lack of variety in composition and the sentimentality which made all her sitters look sweet and virtuous.