Little Girls and Perambulators, Chelsea Embankment
1888–89
Medium
Etching in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image/plate: 6.4 × 8.9 cm (2 9/16 × 3 9/16 in.); Sheet: 6.8 × 8.9 cm (2 11/16 × 3 9/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
210917
Art Historical Context
Theodore Roussel's *Little Girls and Perambulators, Chelsea Embankment* (1888–89) captures a tender moment of Victorian leisure along London's Thames riverside. The etching depicts young girls strolling with baby carriages—or perambulators—on the newly constructed Chelsea Embankment, a symbol of 19th-century urban progress completed in the 1870s. Roussel, an Anglo-French artist influenced by James McNeill Whistler, favored intimate scenes of everyday life, blending British domesticity with a subtle aesthetic elegance reminiscent of the Aesthetic Movement. Rendered as a delicate etching in bla...
About the Artist
Theodore Roussel · 1847–1926
Theodore Casimir Roussel was born on 23 March 1847 in Lorient, Brittany, France, into a naval family. After serving in the Franco-Prussian War, he began painting in 1872 as an entirely self-taught artist, initially rendering scenes of daily life in the meticulous style of the Old Masters. In 1878, he settled permanently in London, where he immersed himself in the vibrant British art scene. There, ...