Abstract

URIBE, Verónica. Sketching Childhood: Francisco Antonio Cano's "Dibujos del hogar' Sketchbook (1895). Hist. Soc. [online]. 2020, n.39, pp.272-308. ISSN 0121-8417.  https://doi.org/10.15446/hys.n39.82593.

Francisco Antonio Cano drew his children in a sketchbook he later named "Dibujos del hogar" (drawings of home), so as to commemorate the daily happenings of his family. This article proposes that this "baby" sketchbook had two objectives: immortalizing his children by registering the fleeting instants of their infancy, and drawing as a means of making the artist evident. The text states that the passing moment of childhood was commemorated through a medium that is, by definition, ephemeral. Through a careful visual analysis of the sketchbook, reading it aesthetically through the lens of the genre of sketching, and pinpointing the topics of childhood throughout its pages, this article presents a study of an object that hasn't been researched, and that allows us to understand Cano as a modern yet intimate painter. Sketching, as a practice, makes itself evident in this sketchbook precisely through the topic it represents: an instant in time that vanishes both in life as well as in the momentary act of the artist/father that draws it.

Keywords : Francisco Antonio Cano; sketches; drawing; children in art; history of art; nineteenth century.

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