Young boys have been a traditional staples of genre painting. To patrons of art during the mid-nineteenth century these youths recalled memories of their own growing years in which innocence was becoming more and more modified by mischievous cunning. —PH
American Art Association sale catalogue, 1891: "The bad little scholar is seated on the tall fool's stool in a corner of the school-room. He is a sturdy little, crop-headed, apple-cheeked fellow, and evidently not yet repentant. He wears a blue suit and boots. One hand is in his breeches pocket. The other is against his lips as if to repress his sobs. The book from which his lesson has not been learned is on the floor. On the walls hang the coats, caps, and satchels of his schoolmates, to whose industrious study he is made an example."
The Albion, April 13, 1861: “It is otherwise again with no. 374 [as with Johnson’s The Papers—Portraits and Husking], in the Fourth Gallery, ‘The Culprit,’ a young urchin perched in a corner upon the high stool of repentance, just as nice a bit, as artistic, as full of character, as two-thirds of the Frères and others of the French school, concerning which the Town goes into raptures, and for which it pays such high prices.”