On 2nd February 1844, Mr Vuillemin proposed a new law to the Chamber of Peers concerning education. It was the third of its kind!
It declared the following : Freedom and right of fathers to choose their children’s teachers… A long debate followed to no avail.

In 1880, Jules Ferry introduced secondary education for girls. Then in 1881-1882, he provided free primary education in France which was compulsory and non religious.

Education became a national priority.

The advertising process was under way, brands were accompanied by pictures. These illustrations also served to educate the masses. Marketing goods in the countryside brought chromos into homes where children were either ignored or considered as adults according to their age.

They now discovered zoos, the French colonies, leisure activities and culture… A world unknown to them. Children had provided free labour and had often been exploited but, at last, they were being taken into account. They could go to school and take time to enjoy themselves. These attractive scenes using a mass medium reveal an iconographical record of the era.

Up until then, paintings mostly depicted genre and romantic scenes and rural landscapes. (Fragonard, Boucher…etc.)
From the end of the 19th century, “the printed object” spread in all its new forms, making way for knowledge, inventiveness and the broadening of the mind. 
Advertisers and manufacturers understood that children were a selling point. Parents were touched by the pictures of well behaved children and bought more when the packaging depicted an innocent face.