Genre
CHARLES FELIX BLAUVELT (1824–1900)
Child with Kaleidoscope, 1871
Oil on canvas, 12 1/16 x 9 3 /16 in.
Signed and dated (at lower left): CF / Blauvelt 71
Child with A Kaleidoscope is one of the last pictures that Blauvelt painted before he moved to Annapolis to join the faculty of the Naval Academy. Although Blauvelt did not become a portraitist as he appears to have intended during his student days, he did become a figure painter, populating his genre narratives with portraits of children, women, and elderly folk. The child in Child with Kaleidoscope is fascinated by the device, holding it with both hands while looking into it with one eye while the other eye is closed. Behind, a doll, its eyes wide open, lies abandoned on the floor, vanquished by the superior allure of the multicolored shifting shapes inside the optical toy. Indeed, the kaleidoscope has proved compelling to children and adults alike since its invention in about 1816 by Sir David Brewster (1781–1868). It is “an optical device consisting of mirrors that reflects images of bits of colored glass in a symmetrical geometric design through a viewer” (quoted from an online article, “A Brief History of Kaleidoscopes”). Brewster was a Scot, born into a family of educators and ministers. Turning aside his early plan to become a Presbyterian cleric, he became an empiric investigator of physical optics, pioneering in discoveries that led up to the development of photography. He is credited with inventing not only the kaleidoscope, but also, among other devices, an improved stereoscope that led to three-dimensional viewing. Brewster coined the name kaleidoscope in his 1817 patent, combining the ancient Greek words “kalos, meaning beauty with “eidos,” indicating that which is seen.
