Art is a unique feature of human experience. It involves the complex interplay among stimuli, persons and contexts. Little is known of how the various features deemed important in art appreciation depend on development, thus are already present at a young age. Similarly to our previous approach with adults of differing levels of expertise, the present study uses structural equation modeling to explore this complex interplay by analyzing differences in the appreciation of classical, abstract and modern artworks by children of two age groups. We measured evaluations of perceived beauty, elicited emotions, arousal and understanding. Structural equation solutions for children not only revealed significant effects of emotion in all conditions, but also confirmed that the dependencies between emotion and liking were consistently higher for younger children, while the interactions of arousal and liking, as well as understanding, were higher for older children. These results are in accordance with a transition from an affective towards an increasingly cognitive knowledge based sense of aesthetics, but underline the importance of emotional processing as fundamental.