Boy with a Flintlock Rifle

Boy with a Flintlock Rifle

Boy with a Flintlock Rifle
Artist:Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (French, Paris 1755–1842 Paris)
Date:1817
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:21 × 17 3/4 in. (53.3 × 45.1 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay (1986.343)

Children occupied an increasingly important place in Vigée Le Brun’s time, when the relative influence of nature and nurture was a subject of debate. The boy in this portrait is unidentified and could be eight or ten. He wears a gentleman’s coat or jacket and holds a sturdy functional gun, which could have been his own first weapon.

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