The Project Gutenberg EBook of Child-life in Art, by Estelle M. Hurll

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Title: Child-life in Art

Author: Estelle M. Hurll

Release Date: April 30, 2008 [EBook #25268]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: THE SISTINE MADONNA.--RAPHAEL.]

CHILD-LIFE IN ART
BY
ESTELLE M. HURLL, M.A.

Illustrated

Children are God's apostles, day by day
Sent forth to preach of love and hope and peace.
LOWELL.

BOSTON
JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY
1895

_Copyright, 1894,_
BY JOSEPH KNIGHT COMPANY.

University Press:
JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

PREFACE.

The subject of this little book is its best claim upon public favor.
Child-life in every form appeals with singular force to the sympathies
of all. In palace and in cottage, in the city and in the country,
childhood reigns supreme by the divine right of love. No monarch rules
more mightily than the infant sovereign in the Kingdom of Home, and none
more beneficently. His advent brings a bit of heaven into our midst, and
we become more gentle and tender for the sacred influence. Every phase
of the growing young life is beautiful and interesting to us. Every new
mood awakens in us a sense of awe before unfolding possibilities for
good or evil.

The poetry of childhood is full of attractiveness to the artist,
and many and varied are the forms in which he interprets it. The
Christ-child has been his highest ideal. All that human imagination
could conceive of innocence and purity and divine loveliness has been
shown forth in the delineation of the Babe of Bethlehem. The influence
of such art has made itself felt upon all child pictures. It matters not
whether the subject be a prince or a street-waif; the true artist sees
in him something which is lovable and winning, and transfers it to his
canvas