Offspring

Pietro della Vecchia
Woman with Child
before 1687
oil on canvas
private collection

Benjamin West
Mother and Child
1783
drawing
British Museum

Pierre-Augustin Thomire
Portrait of a Woman and Child
1783
oil on canvas
private collection

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Self Portrait with daughter Julie
1786
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Ralph Earl
Mrs William Taylor and her Daughter
1790
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Robert Lefèvre
Catherine Josephine Muller and her Daughter
1803
oil on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Anonymous French Painter
Mother and Child
1831
watercolor on paper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Robert Thorburn
Miniature Portrait of the Duchess of Buccleuch
and her daughter Lady Victoria Scott
1847
watercolor on ivory
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Gustaf Wappers
Mother and Child
1853
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Narcisse-Virgile Diaz de la Peña
Oriental Mother and Daughter
1865
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Thoma
In der Hängematte (the artist's wife and child)
1876
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Eva Gonzalès
Nursemaid and Child
ca. 1877-78
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Edmund Charles Tarbell
Mother and Child in a Boat
1892
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Edvard Weie
Mother and Child
1905
oil on canvas
private collection

Augustus John
Woman and Child
ca. 1911-12
oil on panel
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Alfonso Ossorio
Mother and Child
1951
oil and enamel on canvas
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Paul Strand
Postmistress and Daughter - Luzzara, Italy
1953
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

from The Wreck of the Deutschland

            For how to the heart's cheering

            The down-dugged ground-hugged grey

        Hovers off, the jay-blue heavens appearing

            Of pied and peeled May!

    Blue-beating and hoary-glow height; or night, still higher,

    With belled fire and the moth-soft Milky Way,

        What by your measure is the heaven of desire,

The treasure never eyesight got, nor was ever guessed what for the hearing?

– Gerard Manley Hopkins (1876)

Young

Jan Soens
Self Portrait held by the Artist's Sons
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Elisabetta Sirani
Infant St John the Baptist in the Wilderness
1664
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Jan Steen
The Children's Meal
ca. 1665
oil on panel
Nivågård Museum, Denmark

attributed to Bernard Perrot
Putto as Table Decoration
(part of a suite)
ca. 1685
glass
Musée du Louvre

James Ross and John Thomson
A Happy Dream
ca. 1862-63
albumen print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Julia Margaret Cameron
Portrait of Kate Keown
1866
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ignacio Pinazo Camarlench
Portrait of Pepito, the Artist's Son
1880
oil on canvas
Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia, Spain

John Sloan
Young Boy
1896
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Edward Steichen
Katherine Eunice Starr
1907
autochrome
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Maurice Prendergast
Portrait of a Boy
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Tina Modotti
Untitled
ca. 1927-28
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Irving Penn
New York Child
1949
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation)

Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Figure with Dolls
1959
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Philip Pearlstein
Portrait of the artist's daughter Ellen
1969
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Herbert Randall
Untitled
1970
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Julian Opie
Untitled
ca. 2005
screenprint
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Nora Othic
Boy with Livestock
2019
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Evening.  A slick and unctuous Time

Has sold us yet another shop-soiled day,

Patently rusty, not even in a gaudy box.

I have dusted the six small rooms:

The parlour, once the magnificent image of my freedom,

And the bedroom, which once held for me

The mysterious languors of Egypt and the terrifying Indias.

The delivery vans have paid their brief impersonal visits.

I have eaten a scrappy lunch from a plate on my knee.

I have spoken with acquaintances in the Stores;

Under our treble gossip heard the menacing throb of our hearts

As I hear them now, as all of us hear them,

Standing at our stoves in these villas, expecting our husbands:

The drums of an enormous and routed army,

Throbbing raggedly, fitfully, scatteredly, madly.

We are lost.  We are lost.

– W.H. Auden (1936)

Young

Anonymous Italian Sculptor
Christ Child in Blessing
ca. 1485-1515
marble
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous Italian Painter in Bergamo
Fanciullo Bacco
ca. 1550
oil on panel
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Antoine Le Nain
The Young Card-Players
1643
oil on copper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Benedetto Luti
Head of a Page
before 1724
oil on canvas
Palazzo Corsini, Rome

John Hoppner
The Hoppner Children
1791
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jean-Jacques Henner
Alsation Girl
1873
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Joseph Middleton Jopling
Midge
1874
watercolor and gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Kusakabe Kimbei
Group of Children
ca. 1880-90
hand-colored albumen silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Wilhelm von Gloeden
Sicilian Child with Flowers
1903
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Heinrich Kühn
Two Boys
ca. 1907
autochrome
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation)

John Heartfield
Capitalism robs You of the Last Piece of Bread
1932
lithograph
(German Communist Party election poster)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Helen Levitt
New York
1938
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

William Klein
Stickball - West 108th Street - New York
1954
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ralph Eugene Meatyard
Untitled
ca. 1959
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Nan Goldin 
Max and Richard, New York City
1983
C-print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Robert Mapplethorpe
Lindsay Key
1985
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Sally Mann
Dead Duck
1988
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Now through night's caressing grip

Earth and all her oceans slip,

Capes of China slide away

From her fingers into day

And the Americas incline

Coasts toward her shadow line.

Now the ragged vagrants creep

Into crooked holes to sleep:

Just and unjust, worst and best, 

Change their places as they rest:

Awkward lovers lie in fields

Where disdainful beauty yields:

While the splendid and the proud

Naked stand before the crowd

And the losing gambler gains

And the beggar entertains:

May sleep's healing power extend

Through these hours to our friend.

Unpursued by hostile force

Traction engine, bull or horse

Or revolting succubus;

Calmly till the morning break

Let him lie, then gently wake.

– W.H. Auden (1935)