Family & Social Life

Bennet Family Record

Donations to the Museum have preserved irreplaceable evidence about generations of ordinary Americans. Objects from the Copp household of Stonington, Connecticut, include many items used by a single family from 1740 to 1850. Other donations have brought treasured family artifacts from jewelry to prom gowns. These gifts and many others are all part of the Museum's family and social life collections.

Children's books and Sunday school lessons, tea sets and family portraits also mark the connections between members of a family and between families and the larger society. Prints, advertisements, and artifacts offer nostalgic or idealized images of family life and society in times past. And the collections include a few modern conveniences that have had profound effects on American families and social life, such as televisions, video games, and personal computers.

Name: Jacque, Charles Émile

Farm Scene, the Scourer

This impression of La Recureuse by Charles Jacque is neither signed nor dated. The print shows a farm girl washing a large tub, which has been propped up on a rustic stool or wooden chopping block.
Description
This impression of La Recureuse by Charles Jacque is neither signed nor dated. The print shows a farm girl washing a large tub, which has been propped up on a rustic stool or wooden chopping block. The young boy, standing and carrying a shield, originally was shown relieving himself. A later hand, possibly Stephen Ferris’s or Gerome Ferris’s, censored the artist’s composition by whiting out the original activity and inking in a shield. Printed on chine colle.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1845
graphic artist
Jacque, Charles Émile
ID Number
GA.14705
catalog number
14705
accession number
94830

Man with a Broken Pitcher

La Cruche Cassée etched by Charles Jacque shows a seated man with a broken pitcher in his left hand, at which he gestures with his right. Shards from the pitcher lie on the floor, and a basket tilts off the edge of the table, on which sits an empty glass.
Description
La Cruche Cassée etched by Charles Jacque shows a seated man with a broken pitcher in his left hand, at which he gestures with his right. Shards from the pitcher lie on the floor, and a basket tilts off the edge of the table, on which sits an empty glass. It appears that Jacque is chronicling the kind of mishap that can befall the drinking man. Before concentrating on depictions of rural life, Jacque made caricatures for a satiric magazine. In his prints, however, he presented the life of rural people sympathetically, not satirically.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1844
graphic artist
Jacque, Charles Émile
ID Number
GA.14706
catalog number
14706
accession number
94830

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