Skip to main content

School Rules

Collections Menu
Photography by Steven Watson
School Rules
Photography by Steven Watson

School Rules

Artist (1824 - 1900)
Date1887
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions18 × 24 in. (45.7 × 61 cm)
Framed: 25 in. × 31 in. × 3 1/2 in.
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LinePromised Gift to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
Signedl.r.: W.H. Beard / 1887
On View
On view
Label TextWilliam Holbrook Beard delighted in making satirical paintings of animals as human. This humorous scene presents a group of naughty school children. A slovenly pig chatting with a hare, a shy bear standing next to a sly fox, a bickering cat and dog, and a squirrel stand in line for discipline by their schoolmaster ape, who holds a switch behind his back.

By the end of the nineteenth century, compulsory school attendance laws increased educational opportunities for more American children than ever before.
Photography by Dwight Primiano
James Henry Beard
1885
Photography by Dwight Primiano
William Baziotes
1958
Photography by Dwight Primiano
William Merritt Chase
1907
Photography by Dwight Primiano
William Merritt Chase
ca. 1875
Photography by Dwight Primiano
William Merritt Chase
ca. 1890
Photography by Dwight Primiano
William Trost Richards
ca. 1863-1864
Photography by Steven Watson
Dwight William Tryon
1902
Photography by Edward C. Robison III
William Jacob Hays, Sr.
1867
Photography by Robert LaPrelle
William Keith
1872
Photography by Edward C. Robison III
William Mason Brown
ca. 1865-1878