Imagining Childhood

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Cloth, 263 pages, illustrations (some colour); 27 cm. Firm binding, clean inside copy. Dust jacket protected in a mylar cover. "The images of children that abound in Western art do not simply mirror reality; they are imaginative constructs, representing childhood as a special stage of human life, or emblematic of the human condition itself. In a compelling book ranging widely across time, national boundaries, and genres from ancient Egyptian amulets to Picasso’s Guernica, Erika Langmuir demonstrates that no historic period has a monopoly on the ‘discovery of childhood’. Famous pictures by great artists, as well as barely known anonymous artefacts, illustrate not only Western society’s perennially ambivalent attitudes to children, but also the many and varied functions that works of art have played throughout its history. / Erika Langmuir was formerly head of education at the National Gallery, London; she taught at the University of Sussex and was professor of art history at the Open University. She is the author of the National Gallery Companion Guide and several titles from the best-selling National Gallery Pocket Guides series, as well as co-author of the Yale Dictionary of Art and Artists, all published by Yale University Press." - Publisher. CONTENTS: Introduction: mainly about parents; The vulnerable child; Protection; Innocent victims; Mourning and consolation; Stages of childhood; 'The vilest state of human nature': swaddled infancy’ First steps and the baby walker; 'Better to keep still': playful childhood and adult laughter; 'Jean qui pleure et Jean qui rit', and 'as the old have sung so pipe the young'; Miniature adults; Children's dynastic portraits; Conclusion: bubbles.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. 4to. Collectible.