Albert Anker

While a girl at the table is doing her school homework on a small blackboard, a little boy, apparently whimpering, is standing next to her, the tip of his nose barely reaching over the table’s edge. The blonde girl is engrossed in her work, smiling at the futility of such disruptive behavior. The boy’s eyes are focused on the apple lying on the table in front of the blackboard. Is it that he wants the fruit which is waiting as a reward for the pupil’s hard work for himself? The apple is the only striking splash of color at the center of the children’s interest and is located exactly in the middle of the lower part of the image. The apple, together with the two children’s faces, creates an isosceles triangle and is situated at an equal distance between the girl’s mouth and the one of the little troublemaker. While the girl’s arm creates a barrier to the apple, her smile could be indicating sisterly indulgence and generosity, both subtle psychological sentiments in the relationship between siblings. The painting was already being praised, as early as 1900, in the magazine Die Schweiz (vol. 4, issue 8) as an outstanding observation of the nature of children. Albert Gessler admiringly wrote: “How much meticulous study has gone into these two heads (…) how much love for every detail, how much quiet concentration on the essentials was required until such a simple but at the same time harmonious image emerged.”