# The Waagepetersen Family

- By: Wilhelm Marstrand (Danish, 1810–1873)
- Date: 1836
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Classification: Painting
- Dimensions: height 58.8 cm, width 68 cm, height 70.4 cm, width 80.3 cm
- Culture: Danish
- Museum: [SMK – National Gallery of Denmark](https://open.smk.dk/artwork/image/KMS3329)
- Rights: [Public Domain Mark: SMK waives its rights in this photograph](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/)
- Picture: https://iip-thumb.smk.dk/iiif/jp2/x633f4268_KMS3329.tif.reconstructed.tif.jp2/full/!1920,1080/0/default.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

The children take centre stage in this image. They are gathered around a table, playing. The active children form a triangle, creating their own space full of playfulness, energy, and frolicking. Two other children look upon the goings-on with obvious curiosity, dreaming of participating themselves. The boy is drawing, holding up a drawing so that we can see that he has drawn a man poking out his tongue. It is thrown right in our faces as if by a teasing child. Around the playing children everything is firmly in order: The grandparents and an older sister look down upon them from pictures on the wall, the children's mother sits in quiet contemplation holding a child's stocking, and the nanny is holding the youngest of the flock on her arm. The image pre sents a specific social class; here, we see the absolute pinnacle of society depicted in an idealised manner; the children are presented on a silver platter in all their mischievous curiosity and vibrancy - an early precursor of the current trend towards parading children as trophies?