Sentimental genre prints documented the social image of Victorian virtue through domestic scenes of courtship, family, home life, and images of the “genteel female.” Children are depicted studying nature or caring for their obedient pets as they learn their place in the greater world. Romantic scenes picture devoted husbands with their contented, dutiful wives. In these prints, young women educated in reading, music, needlework, the arts, the language of flowers, basic math and science are subjugated to their family’s needs.
These prints became popular as lithography was introduced to 19th Century Americans. As a new art form, it was affordable for the masses and provided a means to share visual information by crossing the barriers of race, class, and language. Sentimental prints encouraged the artistic endeavors of schoolgirls and promoted the ambitions of amateur artists, while serving as both moral instruction and home or business decoration. They are a pictorial record of our romanticized past.
This is a colored print; outdoor village scene with husband coming through gate in foreground. He is being greeted by wife, three children, a grandmother, and a dog. Family members are attired in simple costumes with all but one of the females wearing an apron. The husband has a knife in his belt and over his shoulder what appears to be either a broom or a pitchfork filled with hay. A shovel stands near the gate. In the foreground is a thatched-roof, one story house with leaded, casement windows. It is surrounded by a rail fence. Other homes are in the background.
The print was produced by E.B. & E.C. Kellogg, the lithographic Hartford, Connecticut firm formed in 1840 by Edmund Burke Kellogg and his brother Elijah Chapman Kellogg as the successor to D. W. Kellogg & Co.
