Children playing with a lamb

Menn's Children Playing with a Lamb, painted around 1840, is a pastoral genre scene combining the artist's interest in childhood innocence with traditional pastoral imagery. The subject of children with a lamb carries obvious Christian symbolism — Christ as the Lamb of God — while also evoking the classical pastoral tradition. Menn's Geneva training and Parisian studies under Ingres gave him command of both figure painting and landscape.

Menn's oil-on-canvas technique renders the children and lamb with warm, naturalistic color and careful modeling. The landscape setting is painted with the attention to natural light that characterizes his Swiss landscape sensibility, creating a harmonious pastoral atmosphere.