Episode 190: Picture Talk

Charlotte Mason included the study of great works of art in her regular school curriculum. This episode explores the many options for making picture study and picture talk more robust, richer, and engaging for your children with examples and ideas straight from the P.N.E.U.–ideas beyond just “look and tell.”

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“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. A friendly picture-dealer supplies us with half a dozen beautiful little reproductions of the work of some single artist, term by term. After a short story of the artist’s life and a few sympathetic words about his trees or his skies, his river-paths or his figures, the little pictures are studied one at a time; that is, children learn, not merely to see a picture but to look at it, taking in every detail. Then the picture is turned over and the children tell what they have seen…there is enough for a half hour’s talk and memory in this little reproduction of a great picture and the children will know it wherever they see it…

“It will be noticed that the work done on these pictures is done by the children themselves. There is not talk about schools of painting, little about style; consideration of these matters comes in later life but the first and most important think is to know the pictures themselves.
“As in a worthy book we leave the author to tell his own tale, so do we trust a picture to tell its tale through the medium the artist gave it. In the region of art as elsewhere we shut out the middleman.” (6/214-216)

” In Forms V. and VI., a more organised study is begun with the help of books on the history and development of art. The girls may read to themselves a section on a certain say; then in class, after narration of the passage which has been read, we may take one of the principle painters. They study several reproductions of his works and then, choosing the one she prefers, each studies it for a few minutes, afterwards narrating it in writing or drawing. Later, an essay may be written on the particular school of painting with descriptions of some of the pictures.” (PR 42, pp. 443-444)

“Miss Parish advocated a variety in the manner of taking the ‘talk.’ Children might sometimes be allowed each to describe a picture so as to make the others see and recognise it.” (L’Umile Pianta 1907, p. 9)