On the brick pavement of a sunny veranda, a young toddler leans heavily on her right arm, to our left, as she reaches for a wooden block in this horizontal painting. Much of her face is cast in deep shadow from the bright light overhead, but light brushes the tops of her cheeks and the tip of her nose. She grips a wooden block with her left hand, closer to us. Her left leg stretches to our right in a stocking striped with vivid red and white. Light glints off the shiny material of her black, round-toed slipper. She has short, golden-brown hair, and her white smock is richly embroidered in a pattern of white-one-white with alternating linked loops. Scattered before her, at arms-length, are seven other alphabet blocks lettered in gray with red and tan faces, several wooden building blocks, and a ball of red yarn. A doll in a black dress lies with limbs akimbo, face-down by a potted plant at the right edge of the canvas. A red wagon drawn by white toy horse sits near the left edge. The scene is enclosed with a deep, emerald-green hedge stretching across the background. The artist signed and dated this work as if he had inscribed two of the bricks on the patio with red paint in cursive script, in the lower right corner: “Eakins 76.”

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   Baby at Play is the final work in a series of intimate portraits of family and friends created by Eakins between 1870 and 1876. The painting depicts the artist's two–and–a–half–year–old niece, Ella Crowell. Dressed in an intricately embroidered white frock, her legs clad in red–and–white striped stockings, the child is soberly absorbed at play.

   According to one recent interpretation, Eakins was depicting Ella's initial foray into the adult world of education and learning. Having temporarily cast aside her more infantile toys in favor of alphabet blocks—the tools of language—the child now seems ready to enter the next critical stage in her intellectual development.

   The monumentality of her painted form may seem surprising, considering the diminutive stature of Eakins' model. Her life–sized figure is arranged in a stable pyramidal block at the composition's center and the deft handling of light and shadow further emphasizes spatial volume. Eakins' choice of a lowered vantage point encourages the spectator to adopt a child's point of view. His penetrating psychological insight elevates this picture from a sentimental genre scene to a highly serious portrayal of an earnest, intelligent child.

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