How to Show Pictures to Children/Chapter 7
VII
THE USE OF PICTURES IN THE SCHOOLROOM[1]
In the modern schoolroom of the progressive type. pictures are among the most valued possessions. First of all, from the viewpoint of mere decoration, they add immeasurably to the attractiveness of the child’s environment. Artistically considered their chief function is to minister to the sense of beauty, to create an atmosphere of culture, and to develop the taste for good art. This is indeed enough to ask of pictures. For purely artistic reasons, every school in the land, like every home, should be beautified with genuine works of art. But the latter-day teacher makes pictures serve many purposes besides their original æsthetic end, using them in a multitude of ways to enrich the course of study. Even these secondary uses have an indirect artistic value, for any method is praiseworthy which arouses a child’s interest in good art. The work of the school grades begins with stocking the child’s mind with certain fundamental concepts: ideas of animals, flowers, fruit, and the various phenomena of nature; ideas of the family: the relations of parents, brothers, and sisters; ideas. of home life and occupations; ideas of the world’s work, in the field and factory, on land and sea; ideas of the child’s own interests, activities, and plays. What a storehouse of pictures is at the primary teacher’s command to impress all these lessons upon the pupil’s mind. If large pictures are not to be had, small prints are almost always available; if expensive prints cannot be afforded, the newspapers and advertisements come to our aid.
As to the variety of animal pictures to be had, I speak at length in a special chapter. We have dogs and deer by Landseer and Rosa Bonheur; lions by Barye, Bonheur, and Rubens; horses by Bonheur, Dagnan-Bouveret, and many others; cows by Troyon and Van Marcke; sheep by Mauve; foxes by Liljfors and Winslow Homer. Let me urge again the importance of choosing really good animal art, pictures of animals which are alive, not stuffed; animals which show their real nature, not the caricatured half-human type.
In bringing out the happiness of family love all teachers find the Madonna pictures the most satisfactory expression of motherly tenderness. The strong maternal element in Raphael’s Chair Madonna makes it a prime favorite, and Dagnan-Bouveret’s Madonna of the Arbor is another making the same sort of appeal. Beautiful portraits of mother and child are Madame Le Brun and her Daughter, Romney’s Mrs. Cawardine and Babe, and many examples by Reynolds, like the Duchess of Devonshire and her Baby; Lady Spencer and Boy; Mrs. Payne-Gallway, and so on through a long list. Meyer von Bremen’s Little Brother shows two children eagerly gazing on the newborn baby in the arms of the mother. Millet’s First Step brings in the whole family, the mother supporting the baby toddler as he starts on his journey across the yard to the outstretched arms of his kneeling father. Bouguereau’s Sister and Brother is used to show how the older child becomes a little mother to the younger, and Rubens’s Two Sons charmingly illustrates brotherly love.
To illustrate farm labor Millet and Breton furnish many subjects, from the sowing of the seed to the gleaning of the harvest. The spirit of play—simple gayety of heart—is delightfully illustrated in such subjects as Chase’s Alice, Israels’s Boys with a Boat and Murillo’s Beggar Boys. How all these pictures may be used for story-telling and for the game of picture-posing I explain in separate chapters. The teacher may also have ways of her own for pointing out the lessons she wishes to inculcate.
The use of pictures in language work runs through all the school grades. The picture furnishes something to talk about or write about. It stimulates observation, starts up the thinking apparatus, and arouses the imagination. Among younger children teachers usually prefer story pictures, that is, illustrative or anecdotic compositions embodying a more or less dramatic situation. The pupil is drawn out by a series of questions: “When did the action take place, that is, at what time of the day or season of the year?” “Where does the action take place, indoors or out, in city or country, and in what land?” “Who are the actors? and what are they doing?” This process is called picture-reading, and forms the basis of the pupil’s story composition. The method is one which easily lends itself to exaggeration, if we go beyond the limits of these questions. It is best to keep our “reading” to just what is really written in the picture, merely getting out of it the meaning the artist put into it for our pleasure. When we build upon this foundation a long imaginary tale about the persons of the picture, the process is apt to lead far afield from the proper use of pictures. The sharp distinction which is made in language work between description and narration applies equally to pictures. Sully’s Torn Hat, for instance, or Manet’s Boy with the Sword, is a subject for description, while Blommers’s Shrimp Fishers or Kaulbach’s Pied Piper is really a story picture. A story picture may be treated in either way, descriptively or dramatically, but the non-story picture is less flexible, and should be merely described. A landscape, for instance, is not, properly speaking, a story picture, and in language work should be reserved for pure nature description. The chapters on “Animals,” “Children’s Pictures,” and “Story Pictures” will suggest abundant material to the language teacher. The writer of a composition based upon a picture is bound to scrutinize the subject until every detail is stamped on the memory, and thus the child’s art repertory is enlarged.
The uses of pictures in the study of literature are manifold. It is a long standing custom for teachers to familiarize their pupils with the portraits of the poets whose works they are taught to love. The benign countenance of Longfellow and the prophet-like head of Tennyson look down from many schoolroom walls. For nineteenth-century writers it is customary to use the accredited photographic portraits. For the celebrities of the older centuries we have many ideal heads. Raphael’s two great frescoes in the Hall of the Segnatura (Vatican) called Parnassus and the School of Athens, contain some fine figures of the poets and philosophers of antiquity: Homer, Dante, Virgil, and Ovid, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. I always find high-school pupils greatly interested in these pictures, though I do not recall seeing them in any school hall or catalogue.[2] Two modern pictures giving vivid interest to the life story of the poets represented are Munkacsy’s Milton dictating Paradise Lost and Dicksee’s Swift and Stella.
A few illustrations of famous poems are specially adapted to schoolroom decoration, for the benefit of the literature classes. Such are: Hiawatha as a boy, by Elizabeth Norris; Walker’s four lunettes in the Congressional Library illustrating the Boy of Winander (Wordsworth’s Prelude), Adonis (Shelley), Endymion (Keats), and Comus (Milton); Landseer’s Twa Dogs, to illustrate Burns’s poem; Kaulbach’s Pied Piper, for Browning’s poem; Boughton’s John Alden and Priscilla, for Miles Standish; Stothard’s Canterbury Pilgrims for Chaucer’s Prologue. For older classes, Rossetti’s Dream of Dante, illustrating a passage in the Vita Nuora; the same painter’s Blessed Damosel, illustrating his own poem, and Alexander’s Pot of Basil, for Keats’s poem, may be used, the languorous type of beauty in the pictures corresponding to the character of the verse. Two pictures illustrating the moment of Dante’s first seeing Beatrice are by Ary Scheffer, and Holiday. On the whole, the world’s great poetry has not been and indeed cannot be adequately illustrated. The pictures which a teacher can best use in literature study are those illuminating in a general way the subject treated. For instance, in studying the origin of the drama, a flood of light is thrown on the old Mysteries and Miracle Plays by the works of the contemporary Italian painters. The story of the Nativity and of the Saviour’s Passion, first arranged in scenes in the cathedral and later acted in the public squares, was staged, so to speak, just as in the pictures by Giotto and Duccio. Later painters still adhered to the same traditions and a Nativity by Pinturicchio or Luini or the Crucifixion in the Spanish Chapel, Florence, would be excellent illustrative material of this kind. Tennyson’s Idyls of the King are illuminated, but not directly illustrated, by Abbey’s decorations in the Boston Public Library, which follow the Morte d’Arthur more closely than the poet. The statue of King Arthur from Charlemagne’s tomb at Innsbruck fairly puts Tennyson’s hero before us. Watts’s Sir Galahad is a figure well liked in the schools. Any pictures embodying the spirit of chivalry throws light on the Idyls. I cannot think of anything better than Millais’s noble work, Sir Isumbras at the Ford, where the gentle old knight carries the two children safely across the stream. A modern series of pictures by Blair Leighton gives the four stages of knighthood: The Vox Populi, or Acclamation; the Dedication; the Accolade; the Godspeed.
Pupils studying Shakespeare should be encouraged to collect pictorial Shakespeariana, a pursuit which may become so engrossing that they will follow it all their lives. The making of the Shakespeare scrapbook will work both ways, to fix the characters and plots in the memory, and cultivate artistic discrimination. The material consists, first of all, of course, of all the portraits one can find of the dramatist himself, as well as views of Stratford-on-Avon. Portraits of great Shakespearian actors are also of prime importance, and such a search offers endless possibilities. The list extends from the famous English tragedienne, Mrs. Siddons, whom Reynolds portrayed so superbly as the Tragic Muse, to the stars of our own generation, whom latter-day photography has represented in every pose and costume. There are besides many ideal pictures of Shakespearian characters from Reynolds’s Puck to Millais’s Portia. Ideal illustrations of Shakespearian scenes are not so easy to find, but should be added when possible. Abbey’s series are of this class. The extra-illustrated Shakespeare is a glorified form of Shakespearian collection, bringing text and illustration together—a scrapbook de luxe. One begins by laying in loose pictures here and there in a volume until the binding breaks with the strain. Then the book is taken to pieces, the pages interleaved with illustrations, and the whole collection rebound. It is a worthy ambition to stimulate in young people to be possessed of an entire set of single-play volumes, each one the basis of a picture collection.
Connecting equally well with work in literature or history is the general subject of the evolution of bookmaking. Alexander’s series of six lunettes in the Congressional Library illustrate this theme with remarkable success. Mounted in a single frame this row of photographs (or colored reproductions) is in high favor in schools. There are other pictures, too, of correlated interest showing the book customs of those far-away times before the printing-press. Old pictures of St. Augustine in his cell poring over his books, or of St. Jerome translating the Bible, give an idea of the library accessories in the time of the painters, Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Bellini, or whoever it happened to be. A very pretty subject by Cabanel, called The Florentine Poet, is a garden scene of Renaissance Florence where a wandering story-teller relates to a group of young listeners a tale of love and adventure. Alma Tadema’s Reading from Homer carries a similar subject into still more ancient times.
The domain of classic mythology is contiguous both to literature and to history. It is a fairyland of dreams and visions beloved by children of every age. Not all the subjects lend themselves to art, but some have been beautifully illustrated, and such works are of immense interest in the schoolroom. The teachers of Greek and Latin need them as much as the teachers of literature and history. One must make the selections carefully, avoiding a certain line of subjects, like the amorous adventures of the gods, which are quite unsuited for use. It is through antique marbles that we get our highest conception of Greek divinities. The great sculpture museums of the Old World contain noble statues of Zeus (Jupiter), the sky father; and Hera (Juno), his spouse; of Athena (Minerva), the Queen of the Air; and Aphrodite (Venus), the beautiful; of Ceres, the mother of the race; of Apollo and Diana, rulers of sun and moon; of Hermes (Mercury), the messenger of the gods; and all the rest. Like the portraits of sovereigns, as a background of history, these sculptured figures form the background of our mythological lore, and should be made familiar to school children of higher grades either in plaster reproductions or in photographs of the originals. A few modern representations may be added to our collection of antiques, like Bologna’s Flying Mercury and Vedder’s Minerva.
Our list of pictures naturally begins with that universal favorite, Guido Reni’s Aurora, representing the sun god driving his horses across the sky. Another good picture of the same subject is by Guercino. An appropriate companion picture is Correggio’s Diana, the moon goddess, setting forth for the chase in a chariot drawn by a stag. The fluttering veil and wind-blown hair and garments give an effect of breezy motion to the picture. A quiver full of arrows is slung across her shoulder, with the bow. The crescent moon gleams above her forehead. A charming picture of the same goddess sporting with her nymphs in a smiling landscape is by Domenichino, in the Borghese Villa, Rome. The fair shepherd Endymion, with whom Diana fell in love as he lay asleep among his flocks, is also treated in art. There is a little circular panel by the old Venetian painter Cima, in the Parma Gallery, and a lunette by Walker in the Congressional Library, both showing the youth asleep. As Diana is attended by nymphs, so Apollo, as patron of the arts, is surrounded by the nine muses. Thus we see them all circling around in a rhythmic dance in the picture by Giulio Romano, in the Pitti, Florence. Another picture of these figures may be had by isolating the central group in Raphael’s famous fresco of Parnassus. Apollo’s pursuit of Daphne is a subject painted by Giorgione (Seminario, Venice), but the figures are rather inconspicuous in a landscape. A graceful group by the late Italian sculptor Bernini is in the Borghese, at Rome.
The Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne is not an especially important incident in mythology, but it happens to be the subject of one of the finest works of the Venetian Renaissance. The picture is by Tintoretto, in the Venice Academy. Venus hovering in the air joins the hands of the lovers and marries them with a ring. Grace and poetry of motion, flow 
DIANA
Convent of S. Paolo, Parma
A mythical hero endeared to us in Hawthorne’s Wonder Book is the gallant Perseus, who set forth to secure the Medusa’s head and ended by the rescue of Andromeda. He was equipped for the adventure, as we all remember, by the sandals of Hermes and the helmet and shield of Athena. Burne-Jones has illustrated the whole tale in a series of five pictures, of which the best subject for school is the hero receiving the precious gifts from the sea maidens. The bronze statue by Cellini, which is one of the sights of Florence in the Loggia dei Lanzi, shows the victor standing on the body of Medusa holding aloft his gruesome trophy, the head with the snaky locks. Canova, in a later century, repeated the same subject in a more elegant but less vigorous figure in marble. The Rescue of Andromeda is the subject of a fresco by Guido Reni, in the Farnesina at Rome, not a great work, but an excellent illustration. Old Cosimo Roselli made the story the subject of some quaint and delightful panels in the Pitti Gallery, Florence. The monster dragging his long body towards the fainting maiden is like Carpaccio’s dragon in the story of St. George, a creature to produce delicious thrills of horror and amusement.
The tale of Europa’s elopement on the back of the bull is one we might not be keen about but for its beautiful rendering in Venetian art. Veronese’s opulent picture in the decorations of the Doge’s Palace is one to remember, and the fine work of Titian, admired by Rubens, is one of the chief treasures of Fenway Court, Boston. Other mythological pictures in which young people will find pleasure and profit are Curzon’s Psyche, bringing from Hades the casket of beauty to Venus, passing with bated breath the three-headed Cerberus (Louvre); Regnault’s Automedon with the Horses of Achilles; Watts’s Orpheus and Eurydice, full of tragic feeling; Atalanta’s Race, by Poynter, showing the fleet-footed maiden stooping as she runs to catch up the fatal ball; and Titian’s Three Graces. The Three Fates have been treated by several painters, and one can choose between the attractive modern pictures by Simmons and Thumann, or, if preferred, take the old Italian work once attributed to Michelangelo, representing the weird sisters as rather fearsome old women. Of kindred interest are the sibyls, so often referred to in classic literature and mythology. Among the series by 
THE DELPHIC SIBYL
Sistine Chapel, Rome
The purely classical spirit has never been more admirably expressed than in the works of the late Sir Frederick Leighton. Herakles wrestling with death for the body of Alkestis and the Captive Andromache at the fountain are among the few subjects commonly reproduced. When one reads the long list of classic subjects the painter treated, it seems much to be desired that such treasures should be known to us all. Some of the Homeric stories centering in Ulysses have sometimes been illustrated. By Guido Reni, in the Naples Museum, is Ulysses with Nausicaa and her Maidens; and by Pinturicchio, in the National Gallery, the Return of Ulysses to Penelope.
The history teacher, more than any other, perhaps, needs pictures. First of all she wants plenty of portraits as a background for the story of the nations. Unfortunately it is impossible to collect a series of uniform merit, and in trying to fill the gaps, there is danger of mixing indiscriminately the good and the inferior. The following list of really fine works may be helpful: antique statue of the Emperor Augustus (Vatican, Rome); antique equestrian statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (Capitol, Rome); Vischer’s statue of King Arthur, from Charlemagne’s tomb; Saint-Gaudens’s statue of Lincoln, and the equestrian group of General Sherman led by Victory; Stuart’s heads of George and Martha Washington; Sebastian del Piombo’s Columbus, in the Metropolitan Museum; Titian’s Francis I, Charles V, and Philip II; Velasquez’s Philip IV and the young princes and princesses of his court; Goya’s Charles IV of Spain; Henry VIII, from copies of Holbein’s portraits, and Holbein’s drawings of the statesmen of his court; Dürer’s Maximilian; Antonio Moro’s Queen Mary; Clouet’s Elizabeth of Austria; Van Dyck’s Charles I, Queen Henrietta Maria, many of their courtiers and statesmen, besides the young princes and princesses of the family; Sir Peter Lely’s Charles II; Richter’s Queen Louise (ideal); Rigaud’s Louis XIV; Greuze’s Louis XVI, and the Dauphin (son of Louis XII and Marie Antoinette), and Napoleon; Drouais’s Les Enfants de France (Charles and Marie Adelaide, in the Louvre); Madame Le Brun’s Marie Antoinette alone, and the same queen with her children, both pictures at Versailles; Lenbach’s Bismarck. The pupil who gets an insight into a historical character by means of a fine portrait has gained something towards understanding the meaning of portrait art.
In the study of ancient history there is very great need of a class of pictures which reconstruct the past, so to speak, and do this with trustworthy accuracy. An enthusiastic teacher once said to me plaintively: “After I have given my classes a glowing account of the glories of Rome, all I can show them is ruins!” It is surely too much to ask of the ordinary pupil to transform a collection of pillars and stones into the Roman Forum as it looked to Cicero. While a few architectural views are desirable, it is wiser not to multiply them, and especially not to choose those which are mere heaps of stones. Maccari’s series of subjects, from the decorations of the present Roman Senate Chamber, is very useful; particularly those representing Cicero’s Oration against Catiline and Claudius entering the Senate. Piloty’s Triumph of Germanicus is a picture I have seen worked as a mine of historical information by a veteran history teacher. By the same painter is an interesting picture of The Last Moments of Julius Cæsar. Wagner’s Chariot Race, Vernet’s Roman Triumph, and Leroux’s School of Vestals are all good reconstructions. Salvator Rosa’s Conspiracy of Catiline and David’s Oath of the Horatii (both in the Louvre) are standard works of the old school of classical painting. Two pictures by Gabriel Max, The Last Token and The Lion’s Bride, illustrate the tragedies of the Roman persecutions of Christians.
In French history the most richly illustrated subject is the career of Napoleon. This suggests an excellent opportunity to a class to make collections or scrapbooks of pictorial Napoleonic material. Files of old magazines will yield many contributions, besides prints and photographs to be had from art dealers. I have seen one interesting collection of this kind in which I noted the following subjects: Meissonier’s “1814”; Wilkie’s Napoleon and the Pope at Fontainebleau; Statue of Napoleon, by Vela, at Versailles; the monument at Waterloo; photograph of the palace at Fontainebleau; photograph of the throne at Fontainebleau; photograph of Napoleon’s tomb in Paris; many miscellaneous portraits of Napoleon, Josephine, and Marie Louise from magazine articles. Jeanne d’Arc is another character in French history whose life has been so fully illustrated that one can make charming collections of artistic material in this line. A friend of mine has such a scrapbook of many treasures. It contains, of course, Bastien-Lepage’s Vision of Joan of Arc in the Metropolitan Museum; Frémiet’s famous statue, the ideal figure by Ingres, and Rossetti’s Jeanne d’Arc Kissing the Sword of Charlemagne. There are besides some subjects from the decorations of the Pantheon: Flandrin’s Joan of Arc in prayer; and by Lenepveu, the Martyrdom of Jeanne d’Are and Jeanne d’Arc at the Coronation of Charles VII. Others are Joan of Arc taken prisoner by Rowland Wheelwright, and Joan of Arc going into Battle, by Lionel Royer. Boutet de Monvel’s fascinating child’s illustrated Jeanne d’Arc is unhappily out of print, but may be seen in large libraries. Two popular pictures connected with French history are the Charlotte Corday of the Corcoran Gallery and Millais’s Huguenot Lovers.
In the study of English history the teacher finds rich illustrative material in the noble old buildings of England,—cathedrals, abbeys, and castles,—about which cluster the memories of so many epoch-making events. These views, together with the countless number of historical portraits from the English portrait painters, make a far better showing than the rather scarce and inferior anecdotic paintings of English historical events. In recent years an admirable contribution to English historical art for school use is the series issued by Longmans. There is one set of pictures in black and white, and another in color designed by H. J. Ford, intended for wall decorations. These are in use in the library and schools of Brookline, Massachusetts.
In our zeal for illustrating the history of our own nation, a good many pictures are often collected which have little or no artistic merit. The following list of subjects can be recommended to teachers:—
Washington and Lafayette at Mount Vernon (Rossiter).
- Moran's series of historical marine subjects, about a dozen in number, in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington.
Certain local historical subjects are being used by contemporary mural painters with good effect in the decoration of American public buildings. Such, for instance, is F. D. Millet's Treaty with the Indians, in the Capitol at St. Paul, Minnesota, and such the Edict of Lord Baltimore, by E. H. Blashfield, in the Baltimore Court-House.
It is in view of so many lesson uses of pictures that our schools have multiplied the prints on the walls in the last years, greatly beautifying the rooms. Educators and dealers have prepared carefully graded lists of subjects corresponding to the school grades. These are helpful and suggestive, but by no means final. No two schools, and no two homes, should be decorated alike. Mechanical monotony is to be avoided. There is danger, too, of letting the utilitarian view of art take precedence of the prime value of pictures as pure decoration and pure joy. The educator must be careful not to let the instructive element outweigh the æsthetic.
The wall pictures are only a part of the school picture equipment. The enterprising teacher makes portfolio collections on her own account, and encourages the pupils to collect prints in such ways as I have indicated. The stereopticon, the reflectoscope, or the radiopticon are also in wide use in school lecture work. The teacher who has once caught the enthusiasm for pictorial lesson helps will leave no stone unturned to add to the repertory.
Rererence Books:—
- Severance Burrage and Henry T. Bailey. School Sanitation and Decoration (second part).
- M. S. Emery. How to Enjoy Pictures. Chapter on "Pictures in the Schoolroom" (by Stella Skinner).
- “Art Museums and Schools”; Four Lectures delivered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Report of the Committee on Instruction by Means of Pictures. Boston Public Schools, School Document No. 6, 1913. Valuable list of stereopticon slides illustrating the scenery, architecture, and industries of many lands, to connect with lessons in geography, history, and science.
- ↑ In many of our large cities there are societies to further artistic interests in the schools; The School Art League of New York; the Chicago. Public School Art Society; the Buffalo School Art Association; and similar organizations in Columbus, Ohio; Evanston, Illinois; Houston, Texas; Washington, D.C.; and Worcester, Massachusetts. A great work has also been done by many women’s clubs and High School Alumni associations in furnishing pictures for schoolroom decoration.
- ↑ Since this was written I have seen with great pleasure a beautiful Arundel print of the Parnassus in the Waltham (Mass.) High School.