John George Brown made childhood his primary subject. At first he painted middle-class country children. In the 1870s, he switched to poor city children, who populated urban streets in increasing numbers as immigrant and rural families seeking jobs flocked to the cities. Brown became known for his depiction of bootblacks, the street urchins who made a few pennies by polishing shoes. As in "Tuckered Out-The Shoeshine Boy," he showed them in tattered clothing but clean, well-fed, and healthy. Brown's paintings allowed his patrons (mostly successful businessmen) to disregard the wretched conditions in which these children lived. The artist presented the bootblacks as young entrepreneurs about to begin their rags-to-riches climb in American society. Paintings like this were the pictorial equivalent of the immensely popular "Ragged Dick" stories, written in the late nineteenth century by New York novelist Horatio Alger. In Alger's stories, disadvantaged children exhibit pluck and determination that enables them to rise from horrible poverty to wealth and respectability.
Born in England, Brown came to New York in 1853, working in a glass factory and painting portraits before turning to genre paintings. He served as vice president of the National Academy of Design, to which he had been elected in 1863. Brown's sentimental images of poor but pretty children earned him many patrons eager to overlook the ravages of urban poverty, and he became a wealthy man.

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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