Classroom Activity

Toys Now & Then

Part of 19th-Century America in Art & Literature

Students will be introduced to a popular toy from the nineteenth century—the hobbyhorse—through a painting by Robert Peckham and a contemporary popular children’s verse. They will then complete research on other toys from this time period, selecting one to compare to its closest modern-day equivalent. Then, they will draw a portrait of themselves with a favorite toy or object.

Two children with pale, peachy skin stand and sit on a rocking horse in a wallpapered interior in this square painting. Both children have short, honey-brown hair, high foreheads, dark blue eyes, and small, rounded noses. Their cheeks are smooth and the corners of their thin, pale pink lips curl slightly up. Both wear dresses with puffy, elbow-length sleeves, white collars, calf-length skirts, and wide, white pantaloons over white stockings. At the center of the composition, one child sits astride the rocking horse, which faces our right in profile. The skirt of the forest-green dress splits at the waist to fall open on either side of a white garment underneath. That child’s head turns back over one shoulder to look down and to our left. One black shoe rests in a stirrup, and the child holds a riding crop in one hand. The horse is dappled with fawn brown and white, and has a parchment-brown mane and tail. The horse’s eye we can see is black and its red mouth is open around the bridle and reins. The second child stands at the back of the rocking horse, hands resting on the crossbar that connects the toy's long, curving rockers. That child wears a crimson-red dress and holds the red ribbon of a straw bonnet in one hand. The hair is parted down the middle and that child looks at us. A black cap with a curved, shiny visor and tassels hanging from the crown rests on the base of the rocking horse. The rug has a stylized, terracotta-orange floral pattern against a pine-green background. The wall behind the children is striped with wide bands of golden yellow and moss green. A door with a gold-colored doorknob is swung inward to our left, behind the child in red, to reveal the profile of a staircase beyond. To our right, just behind the horse’s head, a wooden table is draped with a cloth patterned with vines and leaves in dark green against a pea-green background. A lamp with a tall, spindly brass base is topped with a squat, round white globe. A folded newspaper behind the child in green could rest on the table, or could be held by that child. An inscription on the masthead of the paper begins, “Dai.”
Robert Peckham, The Hobby Horse, c. 1840, oil on canvas, Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1955.11.23

Grade Level

Subject

Materials

  • Computers with internet access for student research
  • Writing and drawing materials

Warm-Up Question

In this painting, children imitate a mode of transportation used by adults in the nineteenth century. Nowadays, we no longer rely on horses to get around; what toys do children play with today that imitate the transportation they will use when older?

Background

Gee up, gee up, gee whoah, 
On a stick we ride just so,
With a head and a tail,
ho, ho, ho, ho,
It’s our legs which make him go.

Two wheels at the back or one
It matters not which, 'tis fun,
With a crack of the whip
away we go
Gee up, gee up, gee whoa,
gee whoa.

A ride on a rocking-horse now
Forward and backward we go
With a hand on the mane, a grip
On the rein,
A frightening speed,
to and fro again.

Gee up, gee up, gee whoaooh
Gee up, gee up, gee whoah.

Nineteenth-century children’s verse “Gee up, gee up, gee whoah,” quoted in Patricia Mullins, The Rocking Horse: A History of Moving Toy Horses (Great Britain: New Cavendish Books, 1992), 11.

As prosperity in the United States increased during the nineteenth century, a growing middle class had more expendable cash and relatively more free time to enjoy it. Because their children no longer needed to labor on farms or in factories, they too had time for play. Extra money and the desire to record new standards of living meant that portrait painting was the rage. It was common for nineteenth-century portrait painters to include objects that were part of the everyday lives of their sitters.

The identities of the two children in The Hobby Horse are unknown, but it is almost certain that the figure on the left, whose bonnet hangs on the rocker, is a girl, and the figure on the rocking horse is a boy, whose brimmed hat sits below him. Rocking horses first appeared in Europe in the mid-seventeenth century. In the United States, most horse toys were simple wood, painted or unpainted. This rocker seems to be a particularly elaborate model and was, perhaps, imported. In addition to having a showy horsehair mane and tail, it is covered with animal hide, sports a decorated bridle, and its base is elaborately stenciled and painted to imitate the grain of expensive hardwood. Although at this time some goods were mass-produced, this toy was handmade. Hobbyhorses were popular because children could imitate the equestrian skills they were expected to have as adults.

The artist painted furnishings and clothing with meticulous attention to detail and gave us clues about what life was like for this family. The newspaper on the table has been identified as the Daily Evening Transcript, a paper distributed in Massachusetts prior to 1853. Beside it on the table is an oil lamp. It sits on a crocheted doily that was not only decorative but preserved the table from oil spills. The boy and girl are dressed similarly, which was a nineteenth-century convention. The furnishings in the room, the children's clothes, and the elegant rocking horse all point to the fact that this was a well-to-do family.

Guided Practice

  • This portrait depicts one of the children's favorite playthings, a hobbyhorse. Play horses were so popular in the nineteenth century that children's poems were written about them. This poem by an unknown author tells of a rocking horse and two other horse toys, one with a head on the end of the stick and one with wheels. What does the poem say about how children played with these horse toys? Why do you think horse toys were so popular in the nineteenth century? (Horses were "adult" modes of transportation and, like today, children wanted to pretend to be grown-up; the toy could move around as quickly as a child could; these toys were more safe than riding a real horse at a very young age.)
  • There were no huge toy stores in the nineteenth century, so where did these children get their hobbyhorse? How was it made? Many of today's toys are made of plastic, which had not been invented in 1840. What natural resources were used to make the rocking horse? (Wood, animal skin, and horsehair.)
  • Why would a family want a portrait painted of their children? What would families today probably use to make a portrait? (Cameras, introduced in the United States in 1839, but not widely available until later.)
  • What technology shown in the painting is different from ours today? (Oil lamp rather than electric light.) How is the children's clothing different?
  • What have you learned about nineteenth century life through this painting and poem?

Activity

Students will research other toys from the nineteenth century. Some places to get started:

Slideshow: Toys from the Index of American Design

Philip Johnson, Toy Wagon, 1935/1942, watercolor, pen and ink, and gouache on paper, Index of American Design, 1943.8.7802
Alice Stearns, Toy Locomotive, c. 1936, watercolor and graphite on paper, Index of American Design, 1943.8.16721
Charles Henning, Toy Locomotive, c. 1940, watercolor and graphite on paperboard, Index of American Design, 1943.8.13989
Stanley Chin, Toy Bell Cart, c. 1941, watercolor and graphite on paperboard, Index of American Design, 1943.8.16666

Each student will select one toy and compare it to its closest modern-day equivalent. They should compare and contrast the two toys’:

  • materials
  • fabrication process
  • likeness to an adult activity
  • technological components

Extension

Students will create a portrait of themselves today with a favorite toy or thing. They will then write a poem similar to the one written about the hobbyhorse, describing the look of the object, how they play with it, and the sounds associated with it.

National Core Arts Standards

VA:Cn10.1.5 Apply formal and conceptual vocabularies of art and design to view surroundings in new ways through art-making.

VA:Cn11.1.6 Analyze how art reflects changing times, traditions, resources, and cultural uses.

VA:Cr.2.3.5 Identify, describe, and visually document places and/or objects of personal significance.

VA:Re7.1.6 Identify and interpret works of art or design that reveal how people live around the world and what they value.

VA:Re7.2.5 Identify and analyze cultural associations suggested by visual imagery.

VA:Re8.1.5 Interpret art by analyzing characteristics of form and structure, contextual information, subject matter, visual elements, and use of media to identify ideas and mood conveyed.

Download

High resolution image of Peckhams' The Hobby Horse

More Lessons in this Unit

Down on the Farm

Little House in the Valley

Rolling on the River

Head Chief of the Iowas

The Impact of Inventions

The First African American Regiment

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