In "The Sleigh Ride," a young girl sits on a sled harnessed to a dog in imitation of an adult's horse and sleigh. A boy, probably her brother, hands her a stick which she pretends is a horsewhip. Like children of today, youngsters of the mid-nineteenth century often played by mimicking adult behavior. The wooden sled was a popular toy, and children of both sexes went sliding or coasting as soon as snow conditions were favorable. Dogs, of course, were common pets, and caring for pets was thought to be good training for children.
James Clonney, who had come to the United States from England as a young man, was among the first generation of genre painters. His simple and uncluttered pictures generally have few figures and are mildly humorous. He was reasonably popular in his own day, but he fell out of favor until rediscovered by the American art collector Maxim Karolik in the 1940s. Karolik considered "The Sleigh Ride" an archetypal expression of American daily life. He bought it and several other paintings by Clonney and gave them to the MFA as part of his great collection of nineteenth-century American art.

This text was adapted from Carol Troyen and Janet Comey, "Children in American Art" (Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 2007, in Japanese).

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