An enigma: are these the Pickard's children?

 

In the lounge in Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva hang two paintings by the same artist. They seem to date from the 1930s and may well be part of the furnishings of the original Quaker Centre near the Cathedral. They then would have been moved to its second home in the Palais Wilson, before being stored during the war, and eventually being returned to the Quakers when QUNO was opened. The other painting is of No 5 Place de la Taconnerie, the first home of the Quaker International Centre, which was the ground floor of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute.

The Pickards had three daughters, Jo (b.1924), Alison (b.1926) and Erica (b.1928). The younger two were born in Geneva.  All three went to the International School and were fond of their art teacher. Alison, my informant and the keeper of her mother's archive, said she did not understand how they could have afforded such special education. 

The International School was the first of its kind in the word. It operated on a bilingual basis, teaching equally in English and French. It had a very progressive curriculum being inspired and advised by the  Rousseau Institute (also known as Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute or Academy of Geneva) (French: Académie De Genève or Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau), and then by the Internation Bureau of Education.

In 1912, Édouard Claparède (1873-1940) created an institute to turn educational theory into a science. This new institution was given the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, to whom Claparède attributed the "Copernican reversal" of putting the child, rather than the teacher, at the centre of the educational process.

The founder of the Institute appointed as director Pierre Bovet (1878–1965), whom he considered to be both a philosophical and rigorously scientific person. Between 1921 and 1925, Jean Piaget (1896–1980) took over the reins, soon conferring on Genevan experimental psychology its far-reaching renown. It was to Piaget's dismay, however, that his theoretical work was not as successful. 

In his eulogy at Claparède’s funeral, Bovet highlighted his friend’s profound attachment for Geneva and the broad international influence rapidly attained by the institute he had created; his capacity, in short, to be at the same time of a local land and of the greater world.


Both Claparède and Bovet became Quakers. 

Unfortunately there is no indication on the painting of who the three girls are, but they are the right ages and appearance to be the Pickards.