110

  • Children Playing by the Haystacks

  • ca. 1890
  • Samuel S. Carr (born England 1837, active America-1908)
  • Oil on canvas
  • 30.7 x 40.8 cm., 12-1/8 x 16"
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2000.34

Essay by Erin Granet, Class of 2001

Little is known about Samuel S. Carr, who was born in England and moved to the United States at the age of twenty-eight. Carr lived in Newark, New Jersey and Brooklyn, where he resided from 1870-1907, painting children in outdoor settings, many along the Brooklyn coastline. His beach scenes date from around 1880 and beginning in the 1890s, he painted many pastoral views, popular subjects at the time (Gerdts 143). Carr's paintings are warm and charming, often portraying happy activities, a typical title being Children's Parade, date unknown.

Carr enjoyed painting children and their different pastimes, reflecting the interest in family and children that characterized the nineteenth century. He painted at a time when the United States was experiencing many important changes. The country's population was increasing at a rapid pace and an industrial and urban society had all but replaced an agrarian nation. Americans had a strong sense of national pride and looked optimistically to the future. In looking forward, however, it also became imperative to turn their attention toward the children who would inherit that nation. Children's literature of the time expressed an interest in teaching morality, considered essential for the country's future success (MacLeod 87). Training and socializing became key aspects of raising children.

Carr successfully created a believable sense of life in his works. In his many images of children in outdoor settings, he accurately portrayed the innocence of childhood and the importance of setting examples for children. In Children Playing by the Haystacks, Carr captured the joys of childhood and the simpler life that many Americans had by this time long given up. The young boy carries the small child piggyback while they and the girl standing next to them face the distant haystacks, presumably the labor of the working adults in the far distance. The cool relief offered from wading barefoot in a pond still appeals to a contemporary audience, even if the haystacks are now a distant memory for many viewers today. Carr's works depict the often sentimentalized joys of childhood, which become lost and forgotten as naive children, so easily influenced, grew into adults with children of their own.