First Steps

This 1829 First Steps is an early work from the beginning of Maclise's career, depicting a tender domestic moment of a child learning to walk. The subject reflects the sentimental genre tradition that coexisted with Maclise's more ambitious historical and literary work throughout his career. Maclise, an Irish-born painter who became one of the most accomplished draughtsmen of the Victorian era, executed historical subjects with meticulous attention to period detail and complex figure composition

The domestic scene is rendered with the precise drawing that characterized even Maclise's early work, the figures of parent and child composed with natural warmth and careful observation of physical movement.