Joshua Reynolds, Miss Crewe, 1775. © Private Collection

Rachel Hayward visits Dulwich Picture Gallery for The Changing Face of Childhood - British Children’s Portraits and their Influence in Europe, which runs until November 4 2007.

It is rather apt that the garden of Dulwich Picture Gallery is filled with children enjoying a summer afternoon of art activities while inside artists offer up their own view of what it means to be a child in the gallery’s latest exhibition: The Changing Face of Childhood - British Children’s Portraits and their Influence in Europe.

By way of introduction, the exhibition opens with the 17th century attitude towards childhood as merely a transition from birth to adulthood, a time when a child was valued only for its future promise.

Anthony van Dyck’s The Balbi Children (c1625-1627) typifies this sentiment. The painting is a showpiece with its theatrical drapes drawn apart to reveal boys playing at being men. The second son even poses with a swagger in his admiral’s costume. The play-acting, though, is a serious affair.

The expressions on the boys’ faces remain determinedly resigned to what is expected of them: to inherit the land around them and uphold their lofty status in society.

As the exhibition shows, van Dyck set the standard for a new depiction of childhood. Take what seems at first to be the female version of the Balbi portrait. Maddalena Cattaneo, painted by van Dyck in 1623, portrays a young Italian girl, perhaps no more than two years old. Trussed up in a lacy, white, wedding-like gown, she holds an apple – a symbol not only of chastity but fertility.

However, it is in her vulnerable expression and wispy, golden hair that van Dyck reveals the child behind the advertisement as potential marriage property.

Thomas Gainsborough, The Painter's Daughters, 1758. © V&A Images

A further development is Gainsborough’s 1785 work entitled The Painters’ Two Daughters. Of course, this painting benefited from being free of the restraints imposed by commission but it is still ahead of its time. For the artist gives us an affectionate snapshot in oils; an informal close-up of his two girls, Mary and Margaret.

The Age of Enlightenment brought with it more child-friendly, educational treatises from philosophers including John Locke (1632-1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Locke’s influential 1693 treatise, Some Thoughts Concerning Childhood and Rousseau’s 1762 Émile, or On Education, helped to define childhood as a distinct phase. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Angelica Kaufmann’s portrait of Henrietta Laura Pulteney (c1777). Indeed, Henrietta’s liberal minded parents closely followed Rousseau’s principles in the bringing up of their daughter.

Rousseau advocated children growing up ‘wild’ and free in the country away from societal constraints represented by the city. In the painting, their daughter runs through the countryside, her flowing dress emphasizing a freedom one feels children in pre-Enlightenment portraits would not have enjoyed.

Thomas Lawrence, The Angerstein children, 1799-1800. © RMN, Musée du Louvre Paris, Michèle Bellot, bpk Berlin

The importance to Rousseau of an outdoor life and games is also shown in Lewis Cage The Young Cricketer (1768) by Francis Cotes. The slightly unkempt clothing and relaxed nature of Cage’s pose are a long way from the Balbi boys.

A final portrait, that of The Allen Brothers (1790) by Henry Raeburn, is a turning point for the depiction of children. Gone is the backdrop of landscape as a sign of status or educational tool. The painting captures the boys in a moment of play. There’s a sense of the Romantic about the work, a dreamlike aura without the angelic sentimentality that the Victorians were to use to depict children.

These are just some of the highlights of what is a memorable exhibition. As I leave and step out into the sunshine, the children are still happily making art in the garden. Rousseau would be impressed.