Hide and Seek

Hide and Seek of 1877, in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, depicts children playing the traditional game in what appears to be a domestic interior, with adults present as observers or participants. The subject allowed Tissot to explore the different worlds of childhood and adulthood coexisting in the same space — children engaged in innocent play while adults observe with a complex mixture of fondness, nostalgia, and perhaps something more ambiguous. Tissot was particularly skilled at the social observation of domestic interiors, and the game of hide and seek — with its themes of concealment, discovery, and the delight of being found — offered rich possibilities for a painter interested in social surfaces and what lies beneath them. The National Gallery of Art's collection includes important works by Tissot acquired as part of the gallery's comprehensive engagement with nineteenth-century European painting.

Oil on panel, the painting uses the enclosed domestic interior to create a warm, self-contained world. The interplay of figures at different levels — children on the floor, adults seated or standing — creates a lively vertical organisation. Tissot's handling of interior light, filtering through curtains and reflected from polished surfaces, is fully engaged.