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La Mortalité des enfants en bas âge.
Weber. December 12, 1874.
This image (The Death of Young Children) is a sympathetic depiction
of the rural poor. It shows four small impoverished children, alone
at home in a dilapidated house. This image is telling the needs
of the poor, welfare, and hospices.
The Children: They all have an appearance of sickliness.
The boy in the bottom left hand corner has a bloated stomach, which
indicates that he is impoverished and malnutrition. The other three
children are also pathetic looking. The one of the floor on the
left hand side of the image is holding his stomach as if it hurts,
an indication of either sickness of starvation. Finally, the two
children in the bed are too weak to even move. The limbs of these
children are extremely thin and gaunt. The artist has the uncovered
child on the bed looking at the observer, to bring them into the
picture. Through this effect, the observer feels a connection to
the child, and thus has sympathy for him. The artist point for doing
this was to make the upper-classes aware of the needs and abuses
in the child abandonment system.
The House: It is hard to tell whether the house is rural
or urban. There are not enough clues to state for sure which one
it is; however, this may have been the point of the artist. By not
explicitly showing which type of house it is, he is allowing for
it to be more universal for the French citizens. However, it is
fairly obvious that the inhabitants of this house are extremely
poor. There is a hole in the roof through which the sun shines.
The door is broken, and the house is extremely plain. The only decorations
in the room are the two hanging pictures on the wall on the right
hand side of the image. This was a plain give away of impoverished
in a time when the Bourgeoisie prided themselves on aesthetics.
Missing Aspects: The parents, or caregivers are missing
from the image. Therefore, it is not known whether the children
are abandoned or left alone for the day either by their working
parents or caregivers. Either way, the lack of supervision is a
ploy for the reformation of the abandoned child system.
Artistic Techniques: The shades and hues of gray in this
image do not vary tremendously. This makes the objects and children
in the room blend together, and at first site many of them are not
noticeable. This provides as social commentary for the artist as
well. Through making the children and objects blend in together,
the artist is staking that the abandoned children are a problem
in society that everyone tries to push to the side and forget about.
However, they are a serious problem, and Weber is showing that they
cannot be ignored anymore.
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