Blue sailor suit Symbolism

Modern, stylish children’s wear of the 1870s, signaling contemporary taste and the idea of a healthy, active bourgeois childhood.

Common Themes

The modern lens: urban life & speedMimesis vs. abstraction (truth vs. artifice)Leisure & recreationFashion & adornmentClass & inequalityChildhood & innocence

Artworks Featuring This Symbol

Madame Monet and Her Son by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Madame Monet and Her Son

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1874)

Renoir’s 1874 canvas Madame Monet and Her Son crystallizes <strong>modern domestic leisure</strong> and <strong>plein‑air immediacy</strong> in Argenteuil. A luminous white dress pools into light while a child in a pale‑blue sailor suit reclines diagonally; a strutting rooster punctuates the greens with warm color. The brushwork fuses figure and garden so the moment reads as <strong>lived, not staged</strong> <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup><sup>[5]</sup>.