World War I: Play--Children's France


Figure 1.--Here we see a rare colorized photograph of French children playing during World War I. We suspect that there is an element of staging in the photograph, but it probably is a good reflection of how French children dressed and played at the time. Notice sone of the boys are still wearing their smocks after school for play.

We note a number of illustrations by Francisque Poulbot showing children at play during the War. There are also numerous postcards, but these are mostly saged scenes. Photographs sjow French childre playing, but it is often difficult to tell to what extent the photograghs have been staged. We suspect that a good indicator is the extent to which the children have been costumed. Unlike the post card scenes, we doubt if the boys had actual uniforms, but many may have acquired caps or even occassionaly helmets. Here we note that the girls' are commonly costumed in nurses' uniforms. Here we see a rare colorized photograph of French children playing during World War I (figure 1). We suspect that there is an element of staging in the photograph, but it probably is a good reflection of how French children dressed and played at the time. Notice sone of the boys are still wearing their smocks after school for play. Notice the paper hats, they are often depicted in the Poulbot draWings.








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Created: 4:47 AM 8/18/2005
Last updated: 4:47 AM 8/18/2005