Children at the Window

Chubby-cheeked, happy children in their Sunday best are crowded at the window, watching with interest what is going on outside. With friendly smiles, the smaller of the two boys and the sister follow the movement of their brother’s arm as he points out of the picture with his index finger.

Merry peasant children, depicted without any suggestion of social criticism, were a popular motif when this painting was executed in 1853. Furthermore, the subject of frame pictures was a classical motif in European art. Waldm�ller’s version entitled Young Peasant Woman with Three Children at the Window, dating from 1840, is to be found at the Neue Pinakothek in Munich.