Winter

The vogue for paintings devoted to themes of childhood increased markedly in the Victorian era. Such representations tended to concentrate on boys and girls as angelic innocents – children behaving badly were no more tolerable in Victorian art than they were in Victorian life. The cloying sentimentality of this scene is undoubtedly more apparent to modern viewers than may have been intended by the painter himself. Johan Mari Henri ten Kate worked mainly in Amsterdam, although he also spent short periods in England, France, Italy and Indonesia and was well-known to the London art world where his work found a ready market.