Portrait Study of a Child presents Lilla Cabot Perry's poised seven-year-old daughter holding a violin. Confronting the viewer directly and by herself, this likeness of Alice Perry, unlike more sentimental depictions of children of the period, suggests the growing professionalism of women's creative endeavors throughout the late 19th century.
An elite Bostonian, Perry gravitated toward an artistic career beginning in the 1870s and responded to wide-ranging influences. The firm figure drawing evident in Portrait Study of a Child suggests her Parisian academic training, while her focus on children reveals the impact of painter Mary Cassatt. Furthermore, the portrait's restrained palette indicates Perry's admiration of James McNeill Whistler's unconventionally poetic approach to painting.
