Famous Impressionist Artists ~ A Wall Chart for Art Appreciation

Charlotte Mason taught Art Appreciation when her pupils were very young.  She said,

“The study of pictures should not be left to chance, but they should take one artist after another, term by term, and study quietly some half-dozen reproductions of his work in the course of a term …  We cannot measure the influence that one or another artist has upon the child’s sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sight of life; he is enriched more than we know in having really looked at even a single picture.”  (Charlotte Mason Study Guide by Penny Gardner – read about this book in my book list.)

This year I have decided to focus on Famous Impressionist Artists and will use my wall chart;  featuring one artist a month and studying his/her works.  I have selected my favourites of these works and made a gallery for each artist. I included a brief biography of each artist  in the 16 page pdf. download ~ Famous Impressionist Artists Chart

Wall Chart with picture, gallery & biography

Artists & their works

Artists featured are:

Edgar Degas

Vincent Van Gogh

Georges Seurat

Paul Cezanne

Claude Monet

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Paul Gauguin

Mary Cassatt

Paul Signac

Alfred Sisley

Camille Pissarro

Bertha Morisot

Some more tips and suggestions:

• Laminate all the portraits and gallery pictures. (These could be re-used each few years.)
• For review, play a matching game and match the gallery to the correct artist. (I confess that it was challenging for me when I cut up the pages for the chart! 🙂 )
• Let your children research and find 3 more art works to add to the gallery.
• Expand each biography and let your children give 5 – 8 facts about the artist studied.
• Let your children study at least one art work in-depth.  Let them narrate as many details as they can after some time studying the picture.
• Make a sketch or reproduce their own version of their favourite art work for each artist.  Use other techniques – make a mosaic instead of doing pointillism, or use water-colour pencils and then ‘paint’ with water to give the paint effect. (How about trying this re-enactment of an art work – Seurat’s painting in a real life photo!)
• Try find extra coffee table books, library books, calendars or posters with Impressionist Art.  (Have a look at Jimmie’s Collage on her art appreciation idea.)
• Put the featured art as a background or screen saver on your computer.
• Nothing beats seeing excellent art in real life – so visit a gallery or visit a local artist at their studio.
• Enjoy art!  Let it touch our hearts!

Other Web Sites used:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

http://www.impressionists.artist-art.com/

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ncarol/artists.htm

http://wwar.com/masters/movements/impressionism.html