Deacon Peckham's Hobby Horse September 13, 2012

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.