Children Dancing (c. 1650): Art, History and Details

Children Dancing (c. 1650) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Le Nain (French).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Antoine, Louis, and Mathieu Le Nain were brothers who ran a collective studio in Paris from around 1630 until 1648, when Antoine and Louis died. Mathieu continued to produce work under their name "Le Nain" throughout the 1650s. Of the museum's four paintings that have been called "Le Nain" (1958.174, 1958.175.1, 1958.175.2), this work has held its attribution to Mathieu the longest. With his back to the viewer, a musician sits in shadow while a group of children pose patiently in a chain-like formation, awaiting the start of their dance. Because of its reliance on order and collaboration, dancing symbolized familial harmony. The attention to the individuality of the children suggest a family portrait, while their wistful expressions and melancholic tone have led to the hypothesis that the children are portraits-both living and posthumous. The description of the intricate lace and the wearied expressions of the slim boys is characteristic of Mathieu's handling. However, the canvas has been attributed to one of Mathieu's followers, the Master of the Games, because of the static, brightly lit figures whose elongated shadows don't quite describe their forms.

Object facts

• Title: Children Dancing
• Date: c. 1650
• Creator attribution: Le Nain (French)
• Culture: France
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Framed: 115 x 146 x 9.5 cm (45 1/4 x 57 1/2 x 3 3/4 in.); Unframed: 92 x 120.2 cm (36 1/4 x 47 5/16 in.)
• Collection: P - French 17th Century
• Department: European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1957.489

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. Salmon P. Halle in memory of Salmon Portland Halle

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.