3-098-905 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

A girl playing with a fish tank, 1890. Alternative title: Probable position of the Globe before the flood. Its title alone is highly expressive of the anecdotal, literary, and conventional nature of a certain genre of fin-de-siècle painting, characterized by an entirely bourgeois and domestic sensibility and mentality. However, despite all its limitations, this painting, executed with a sober and effective technique, possesses extraordinary documentary value. Aside from the superficiality of the subject matter and the naive play on words in the title, the painting is an excellent testament to the stuffy environments of the era, where children, confined and their activities controlled by the rigid rules of "behave," found their escape in curiosity and mischief.