Beatrice and Lionel Crane 1880

Walter Crane painted this image of his children, Beatrice and Lionel, sometime in the late nineteenth century. It offers us a window into the Victorian cult of childhood. Here, the accoutrements of upper-middle-class life combine with an aesthetic sensibility indebted to the Arts and Crafts movement. Note the children’s carefully tailored clothes, the decorative patterning behind them, and the book that teaches young Beatrice to read. These allude to Victorian notions of domesticity and family life. The image idealises childhood as a period of innocence and cultivation, one requiring careful management within the home. The boy’s toys, which litter the lower left of the image, suggest an awareness of childhood as a distinct phase of life with its own needs and requirements. The social historian may look to sources such as etiquette manuals, household accounts, and popular literature to better understand the values conveyed in this image, and the realities of the social world from which it emerged.