Here you can find all of the Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aids I’ve made, many of which you can download for FREE – no strings attached! (If you’re looking for printable files of JUST the artworks with no additional commentary, you can find those over here.) Each picture study aid contains a brief story from the artist’s childhood (or short biography), synopses of at least six of their works, as well as resources for additional learning and full-size images of each piece for you to print at home. In a few cases, I also sell professionally printed copies of the artwork as well.
Why?
I’m making most of these available for free because I believe that art is important (so much so that I have a BA in art history 🙂 ). One of the things that drew me most to the Charlotte Mason philosophy of education is her emphasis on exposing children to fine art. I loved the idea of simply showing them works of great art and allowing them to absorb them on their own. There were no explanations or in-depth analyses of the pieces to complicate them. The children were simply meant to enjoy and take in the art.
About this topic, Ms. Mason said:
His education should furnish him with whole galleries of mental pictures, pictures by great artists old and new;––…–– in fact, every child should leave school with at least a couple of hundred pictures by great masters hanging permanently in the halls of his imagination, to say nothing of great buildings, sculpture, beauty of form and colour in things he sees. Perhaps we might secure at least a hundred lovely landscapes too,––sunsets, cloudscapes, starlight nights. At any rate he should go forth well furnished because imagination has the property of magical expansion, the more it holds the more it will hold. (Vol 6 pg 43)
I especially liked the last part… “imagination has the property of magical expansion, the more it holds the more it will hold.”
When we first started going through the Ambleside Online picture study schedule, there were a few times that my son asked me something specific about a picture like, “what’s that thing?” or, “who is that?” In some cases, I was able to come up with some random factoid that happened to wedge itself in my brain when I was in school, or I could pull one of my old textbooks down from the shelf and look up the piece in question. In other cases, though, I didn’t have a ready answer.
Because of this, I decided to come up with something I could use in my own homeschool to help me with picture study. Linked below are all of the aids I currently have available. They’re all free, so please feel free to download and use them in your own art appreciation!
Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aids
The list is in alphabetical order by artist last name (except in special cases where artist is known by their first name, eg. Giotto, Michelangelo, etc.) Click on the image or the artist’s name to view the Picture Study Aid.
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
1525-1569 (Flemish – Northern Renaissance)
John Constable
1776-1837 (British – Romanticism/Naturalism)
John Singleton Copley
1738-1815 (American – Neoclassicism/Romanticism)
$7.00 (prints also available)
Gustave Courbet
1819-1877 (French – Realism)
Giotto
1266-1337 (Italian – Late Gothic/Proto Renaissance)
Winslow Homer
1836-1920 (American – Realism)
Michelangelo
1475-1564 (Italian [Florence] – High Renaissance)
Peter Paul Rubens
1577-1640 (Flemish – Flemish Baroque)
Henry Ossawa Tanner
1859-1937 (American – Realism)
$7.00 (prints also available)
Vincent van Gogh
1853-1890 (Dutch – Post-Impressionism)
$7.00 (prints also available)
Johannes Vermeer
1632-1675 (Dutch – Baroque/Dutch Golden Age)
John William Waterhouse
1849-1917 (British – Romanticism/Late Pre-Raphaelite)
Antoine Watteau
1684-1721 (French – Rococo)
$8.00 (prints also available)
James McNeill Whistler
1834-1903 (American – Aestheticism/Tonalism/Impressionism)
Yuan Dynasty
1271-1368 (China)
$7.00 (prints also available)