The Meditating Child
Medium
Chalk manner in red
Dimensions
Sheet (trimmed): 9 3/16 × 7 1/16 in. (23.4 × 18 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953
Accession Number
53.600.3281
Tags
Art Historical Context
Created around 1760, *The Meditating Child* is a delicate red-chalk-manner print jointly attributed to designer Charles Dominique Joseph Eisen and printmaker Louis Marin Bonnet. At just over nine inches tall, the intimate sheet captures an eighteenth-century fascination with childhood innocence set against life’s transience. The image shows a young child lost in quiet contemplation beside skulls, a subtle reminder of mortality rendered with surprising tenderness rather than dread. Bonnet was a leading practitioner of the crayon manner, a specialized etching technique that used multiple toothe...
About the Artist
Louis Marin Bonnet|Charles Dominique Joseph Eisen · 1736–1793
Comment on works: Copper engraver