Problem picture

A Problem Picture is a genre of art popular in the late Victorian era, characterised by a deliberately ambiguous narrative that can be interpreted in several different ways. The viewer of the picture is invided to speculate about several different possible explanations of the scene.

Related Topics:
Genre - Victorian era

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The genre begins to emerge in the second half of the nineteenth century, along with the development of book illustrations that depict "pregnant" moments in a narrative. One of the earliest problem pictures in John Everett Millais' Trust Me, which depicts and older man demanding that a young woman hand him a letter she has received. Either character might be uttering the words. The significance and content of the letter is left to the imagination. Other artists who worked in the genre included William Frederick Yeames, whose "And when did you last see your father?" became the most famous example of the genre. It depicts a young boy of the English civil war period being gently interrogated by Cromwellian troops who are looking for his Royalist father. It is implied that they are asking a trick question designed to discover his location. The painting is poised at the moment the child is about to answer.

Related Topics:
John Everett Millais - William Frederick Yeames - English civil war - Cromwell

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The genre continued to be popular into the early twentieth century, but was by this time increasingly seen as old fashioned and as literary, contrary to the emphasis on pictorial form characteritic of impressionism and post-impressionism.

Related Topics:
Impressionism - Post-impressionism

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