Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aids, Art Prints, and More

Why include fine art in your homeschool?

I believe that art is important (so much so that I graduated from college with a degree in art history!). Taking intentional time to study fine art hones a child’s sense of beauty, develops observation skills, and presents ideas in beautiful ways. It also introduces them to the work of great artists, allowing each of the pieces to become like old friends.

One of the things that drew me most to the Charlotte Mason method was her emphasis on exposing children to fine art. I loved the idea of simply showing students works of art from different artists in various time periods, like Leonardo da Vinci, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, John Constable, and Jan van Eyck, and allowing them to absorb the pieces on their own. With Charlotte Mason’s approach, there were no convoluted explanations or in-depth analyses of the art. The children were simply meant to enjoy and take in each art piece.

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 – emphasis mine)

Charlotte Mason picture study (sometimes called artist study or picture talks) truly is such a simple but powerful weekly practice that can be included in any homeschool routine. Spending one 15-minute lesson per week looking at, narrating, and discussing a work of art from a single artist allows your child to develop a relationship with that artist’s work.