Edwardian Love's Greeting Card with Artist Child

This pint-sized artist's proportions seem almost doll-like compared to the oversized palette they're wielding — dressed in a tiny velvet Lord Fauntleroy suit with a crisp white lace collar, they hold a paint-smeared palette in one hand and a paintbrush in the other, surrounded by their own Valentine masterworks: a stick-figure heart-man with limbs, two floating pink hearts, and a framed portrait of what appears to be a couple. The expression on this child's face can only be described as 'I have seen things that cannot be unseen' — soulful, vaguely haunted, the thousand-yard stare of someone who has painted too many Valentine's Day commissions. The verse at the bottom reads 'In this small sign I find a way / To greet my Valentine to-day,' which is technically sweet but feels oddly formal coming from a child whose art portfolio consists entirely of heart-themed propaganda. Truly, the dark lord of Victorian sentimentality.