TitleDrawing the Elephant
Artist
George Cochran Lambdin
(1830 - 1896)
Date1859
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 24 × 20 in.
Framed (Frame from 326-P): 33 1/8 × 29 1/4 × 2 1/2 in.
SignedSigned at lower left: "Geo. C. Lambdin -59-".
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Bequest of James A. Suydam, 1865
Object number726-P
Label TextFrom 1855-1857, Lambdin studied art in Paris and Munich. Upon returning to Philadelphia he specialized in painting scenes of childhood life. "Drawing the Elephant" dates from 1859 and pictures a small girl holding up a figure of an elephant for another girl who sketches it. Around 1860 Lambdin created several genre scenes featuring children painting or sketching. The work grew out of an illustration assignment for John W. Ehninger's "Autograph Etchings by American Artists" (1859), and was inspired by Thomas William Parson's poem "Childhood," which reads in part:
With us, the story's the reverse:
Our souls are born already strung;
But 'twixt the cradle and the hearse,
Creeps a change o'er us-for the worse!
The heart has music only when 'tis young.
Collections
- 19th Century Highlights from the Collection
