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The theme of a child’s first steps was a popular subject of genre paintings in the uncertain years following the French Revolution, owing largely to its reassuring message of continuity. Catel, who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, would also have been familiar with the related allegory of the Ages of Man, the subject of a major Salon painting by François Gérard (1808; Musée Condé, Chantilly). The present work shares the Italian setting of Gérard’s but updates its antique dress by depicting a contemporary peasant family.

Credit: The Whitney Collection, Gift of Wheelock Whitney III, and Purchase, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McVeigh, by exchange, 2003...

c. 1820-25
Oil on canvas
47.6 x 37.4cm
2003.42.9
Image and text © Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Permanent collection