'Painting Childhood: From Holbein to Freud' opens on 16 March 2019 at Compton Verney

William Hogarth, The Graham Children, 1742. Presented by Lord Duveen through the Art Fund, 1934 © The National Gallery, London

On 16 March Compton Verney Art Gallery & Park is opening its 2019 season with a roundup of iconic works of art across different genres, celebrating the depiction of children and childhood over the past 500 years. ‘Painting Childhood: From Holbein to Freud’ (16 March - 16 June 2019) will explore how artists responded to the specific challenges of depicting children and to each other’s treatment of the subject matter. The display will include ‘fancy pictures’ (depictions of everyday life combined with elements drawn from the artist’s imagination), portraits, themes of play and learning and a wide range of popular masterpieces.

The exhibition will feature works by Hans Holbein the Younger, Anthony Van Dyck,  Jan Steen, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, William Hogarth, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Johan Zoffany, John Everett Millais, Stanley Spencer, Louise Bourgeois and Lucian Freud. Loans will include the National Gallery’s The Graham Children by William Hogarth (1742) and Judith Leyster’s A Boy and a Girl with a Cat and an Eel (about 1635).