National Gallery of Art

This exhibition is no longer on view at the National Gallery.

Overview: One of the most intriguing and often-reproduced American paintings in the collection of the National Gallery of Art—Deacon Robert Peckham's The Hobby Horse (c. 1840)—is the inspiration for this focus exhibition of nine children's portraits created for patrons among a newly thriving class of Massachusetts merchants and manufacturers in the mid-1800s. The works will be displayed along with a hide-covered rocking horse similar to the one Peckham (1785–1877) depicted in his painting.

Organization: Organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Attendance: 77,549

Brochure: Deacon Peckham’s Hobby Horse. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2012.

Image: Robert Peckham, The Hobby Horse, c. 1840, oil on canvas, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1955.11.23