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Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aid Whistler

See that the girls are provided with paint-boxes, brushes, water, pencils, rulers, india-

rubber, and paper.

Photographs of some of Millet’s pictures.
A picture-book by R. Caldecott.

LESSON.

Step 1. Introduce the subject by talking with the children about their original illustrations.
Tell them how our great artists have drawn ideas and inspiration from the work of other

artists; have studied their pictures, copied them, and tried to get at the spirit of them.

Tell them that to-day we are going to study some of the pictures of the great French artist,

Millet, some of whose works Mr. Yates has drawn for us on the walls of our Millet Room,

considering them to be models of true art.

Step 2.-Tell the children a little about the life of Millet (giving them one or two pictures to

look at meanwhile); give only a brief sketch, so that they will feel that he is not a stranger to

them. Just talk to them a little about his early childhood, how he worked in the fields; how

he had two great books––the Book of Nature and the Bible, from which he drew much
inspiration; how later on he went to Paris and studied the pictures of great artists, Michael

Angelo among them.

Step 3. Show the pictures to the girls, let them look well at them, and then draw from them

their ideas as to the beauty and simplicity of the composition; call attention to the breadth

of tone, and the dignity of the lines. Help them, sketching when necessary. to reduce a
picture to its most simple form; half-closing their eyes to shut out detail, help them to get an

idea of the masses of tone, etc.

Step 4. Let the children reproduce a detail of one of the pictures, working in water-colour

with monochrome and making their washes simple and flat, reducing the tones to two or
three.

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