'Children Playing at Doctors' by Frederick Daniel Hardy, oil on canvas, Britain, signed and dated 1863.

Oil on canvas. The children here are playing while their mother and grandmother are out of the house; the two children in the centre are pounding bread in a mortar and pestle to make tablets, but the child on the right has taken the game a step further by climbing on a chair to open the medicine cupboard, and is pouring a measure of perhaps poisonous liquid into a glass to administer to the 'patient'. Fortunately, the adults are seen returning through the door, otherwise the patient might become a fatality, an outcome suggested in the right corner of the picture by the doll which has fallen out of her carriage. There is a mirror on the wall which reflects the view to the outside world through the left-hand window.

Bequeathed by Joshua Dixon

Bequeathed by Joshua Dixon, 1886.
Hardy's long and successful career was principally devoted to painting happily nostalgic episodes in childhood, most often of a domestic and humorous nature. As with so many scenes of everyday life, this work is intended to be 'read' like a written narrative. The children here are playing while their mother and grandmother are out of the house; the two children in the centre are pounding bread in a mortar and pestle to make tablets, but the child on the right has taken the game a step further by climbing on a chair to open the medicine cupboard, and is pouring a measure of perhaps poisonous liquid into a glass to administer to the 'patient'. Fortunately, the adults are seen returning through the door, otherwise the patient might become a fatality, an outcome suggested in the right corner of the picture by the doll which has fallen out of her carriage. Hardy also uses a device much enjoyed by painters and their audience in the middle years of the nineteenth century - the mirror on the wall which reflects the view to the outside world through the left-hand window.

Hardy's long and successful career was principally devoted to painting happily nostalgic episodes in childhood, most often of a domestic and humorous nature. As with so many scenes of everyday life, this work is intended to be 'read' like a written narrative. The children here are playing while their mother and grandmother are out of the house; the two children in the centre are pounding bread in a mortar and pestle to make tablets, but the child on the right has taken the game a step further by climbing on a chair to open the medicine cupboard, and is pouring a measure of perhaps poisonous liquid into a glass to administer to the 'patient'. Fortunately, the adults are seen returning through the door, otherwise the patient might become a fatality, an outcome suggested in the right corner of the picture by the doll which has fallen out of her carriage. Hardy also uses a device much enjoyed by painters and their audience in the middle years of the nineteenth century - the mirror on the wall which reflects the view to the outside world through the left-hand window.

1035-1886