Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
74.7 × 106.2 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented by friends of the artist, 1885
Gallery location
19th Century European Paintings Gallery
Level 2, NGV International
About this work
Images of children receiving reading lessons are first found in seventeenth century Holland and neighbouring countries. In the context of the Protestant Reformation and a shift in social values, the ability to read was crucial, as it was through an independent knowledge of the scripture that people gained access to God. Here Victorian era artist Eleanor Bell intentionally evokes these moral concerns through her use of a brownish, recognizably Dutch, palette. The light falling across the young girl’s face and her opened ‘picture Bible’ dramatises the moment of mental illumination, a device also seen in Rembrandt’s Two old men disputing.
Inscription
inscribed in pen and ink on paper label on reverse u.l.: No 1 Grandmother’s bi(…illeg.) / Price £(…illeg.) / Miss (…illeg.)
Accession Number
p.311.2-1
Department
International Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Subjects (general)
Human Figures Philosophy, Scholarship, Learning and Teaching Relationships and Interactions
Subjects (specific)
Bibles children (people by age group) girls grandmothers literacy reading (activity) teaching women (female humans)
Provenance
Remained with the artist until her death in 1885; presented from her Estate by friends, 1885.
Frame
Original, by J & T Thallon, Melbourne