P is for Picture Study {Blogging through the Alphabet}

Picture study

~"putting the children in touch with the great artist minds of all ages;" studying art of great artists

Don't let the 'children' portion put you off; picture study is for all ages. This is another aspect of our homeschool but really, it is a part of our living. Art is not just on a canvas. God is the master artist. His creation surpasses anything that has ever been put on canvas, sculpted in clay, cast in bronze, etc. Picture study helps us see through the eyes of others God's greatness.

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself. Picture study is just that: studying a picture. How do we do this? We use quality replications of great pieces and we observe what is in the picture until we have it in our minds really well. We have to be very attentive, for if when our time is up and we are asked to recall the picture, we miss details. 

Once we have the details, and the whole image, in our minds, we turn over the print and tell back what we saw. It's a narration, not of what was read in words, but indeed what was learned. 

In the world today things move so incredibly fast! Commercials are aired for just a few seconds and therefore require a lot of visual information to be transmitted to the viewer. We cannot really catch all of the details of a commercial unless it is very toned down. Even hours long movies are incredibly fast paced, with little time to see all that is taking place in a scene. Move, move, move! That's the sense we get from these mediums.

With picture study, Charlotte Mason explained like this:

"It is of the spirit, and in ways of the spirit must we make our attempt...But there must be knowledge and, in the first place, not the technical knowledge of how to produce, but some reverent knowledge of what has been produced; that is, children should learn pictures, line by line, group by group, by reading, not books, but pictures themselves." ~Volume 6, p. 214

And great pictures, not mediocre or one's made 'for children':

"It is scarcely possible to begin these lessons too early. The first stage is attentive looking at pictures which have been carefully chosen, not for mere bright colouring, but for real artistic merit. To withhold good pictures from children because we thoughtlessly conclude them to be incapable of noticing anything but gaudiness of colour, is to despise them, to value them too lightly." ~Miss R. K. Hammond, Parents' Review Archives, Volume 12, no. 7, pp. 501-509 -emphasis mine

Another Parents' Review article talks about picture study and children love great art, even if adults may think they wouldn't:

"To give an example of the kind of picture a child appreciates, I asked some small children of 8 and 9 which of the Durer pictures they had been studying that term they liked best. All, with one accord said: "The Praying Hands"... Would the casual person consider that such a drawing would interest a child? Here Miss Mason again shows her wonderful insight into the child's mind." ~Marjorie F. Ransom, Parents' Review Archives, Volume 34, pp. 75-84

It really is no different today! Give the children great artists to study, without telling them they are to appreciate these, and they enjoy them on their own. Give them bright flashy colors and tell them, whether in words or actions, that is what they are supposed to like, and they will not appreciate art.

Fra Angelico, The Annunciation, 1450

This term we are studying Fra Angelico. Next term it will be Diego Valezquez, followed by Jacques-Louis David. As an adult I am seeing many of these great pieces of art for the first time. And by that I don't mean that I've never seen them. I may have, in passing. But I didn't appreciate them; I didn't learn anything about them; I didn't understand anything about them. They didn't mean anything to me.

Diego Valezquez, Las Meninas, 1656

I want my kids to have an art gallery in their minds. It will be all their own! We may not have great expensive works in our house. We may not be able to go to a physical art gallery that has these on display. But they will know these works. And they will have an appreciation. 

Jacques-Louis David, Portrait of Levoisier and His Wife, 1788

I may have gotten a little carried away here. Picture study is not the same as art instruction. After picture study, then comes the instruction. But not even over the same picture necessarily, lest the student try to reproduce what has been done by the artist being studied and come to despise the painting when their own attempts are not perfect.

P is for Picture Study. Another entry for the Blogging through the Alphabet. You might have been able to tell that I have Charlotte Mason on the brain a bit lately *wink*. Guilty! 

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