The Lost Child

Arthur Hughes

Date: c. 1867 

Materials: Oil on wood panel

One of Hughes's recognised strengths was as a painter of genre subjects with children. This oil is a reduced version of a painting shown at the Royal Academy in 1867 under the title 'L'Enfant Perdu', praised by F. G. Stephens as: "a very fine and powerfully painted picture, as broad in effect as it is subtle in expression", succeeding in a very difficult effect of subdued light. Only on close inspection does a squirrel in the tree - a characteristic piece of detail for Hughes - become visible.