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Charlotte Mason Picture Study Aid Peter Paul Rubens

A Word on Charlotte Mason Picture Study

The intention of this picture study aids is to equip the home educator with some basic facts and
understanding of various artists and a sampling of their works. It is not meant to be an exhaustive

analysis or study of each piece.

About picture study, Ms. Mason recommended keeping it as simple as possible, especially in the
younger years, and put extra emphasis on the images by themselves.

“There is no talk about schools of painting, little about style; consideration of these matters comes in
later life, the first and most important thing 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 else-where we shut out the middleman.” (vol 6 pg 216)

“Definite teaching is out of the question; suitable ideas are easily given, and a thoughtful love of Art

inspired by simple natural talk over the picture at which the child is looking.” (PR Article “Picture

Talks”)

“…we begin now to understand that art is not to be approached by such an acadamised road. It is of

the spirit, and in ways of the spirit must we make our attempt. We recognise that the power of

appreciating art and of producing to some extent an interpretation of what one sees is as universal as
intelligence, imagination, nay, speech, the power of producing words. 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.” (vol 6 pg 214)

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