Winslow Homer Timeline

I have been selecting art prints to teach this fall in an Art Study (aka via Charlotte Mason "Picture Talk") Class. I spent hours at my favorite used bookstore about three weeks ago (with my married daughter and with friends, of course!) perusing dozens of art books to choose for my background research. It has been years since I taught Winslow Homer in our homeschool. I purchased two books of Homer, two books of Van Gogh, and one new, large book of Norman Rockwell to fill out the 2011-2012 schoolyear.


(Snap the Whip - probably Homer's most popular, well-known painting)


Since then, I have also spent a good deal of time researching prints online, to help choose from different time periods of Homer's work, but also to compare the different media he used over the course of his artistic career. I like to find the obscure works, or the lesser known and find the stories behind them. I am odd that way ;-). Though, finding works from the beginning, middle, and latter part of an artist's career is what Charlotte Mason recommended. For my part, I have been both enriched and enlightened!


Many may know that he began as an apprentice learning how to make lithographic illustrations. He studied with John H. Buford of Boston. Then he did some freelance work before moving to New York, where he began working for Harper's Weekly doing illustrations of the Civil War. How many of you know the rest of his story?


I stumbled upon this chronology at the National Gallery of Art website, which includes thumbnail prints of his work, with a brief timeline of his life to the right. Once you click on one of the small prints, it opens up a new window with more information. What a treasure of concise and visual information! Almost better than a book. ALMOST!

I also happened upon a lecture by Peter H. Wood, author of the book Near Andersonville. His book is about a print of Homer's that was lost for about 100 years, how it was discovered, and what Civil War -related meanings exist throughout the seemingly simple painting. I am thrilled to have found this information. Now my husband and I both want this book on the shelves of our home library. (He is an American Lit. teacher and a Homer fan, too).
What are my fellow readers and friends studying in the arts this first term of the new schoolyear? Answer on either FB or the blog link! I really want to hear!

Ciao for now,

Javamom

Cafe Terrace

We just started school this week. Picture Study got set aside for the most part since early in 2004, so our younger two boys needed a reminder of how this works! We always have several prints displayed around our home, on various easels or shelves, but I needed to officially reintroduce active picture study again. Today, I displayed our copy of Cafe Terrace by Vincent Van Gogh for just a few minutes and told them to pay attention to detail. Then I turned the print over (hiding it) and asked them tell me everything they could about it. I had them draw their own copies of Cafe Terrace. They really got into it!

Our younger two boys are 11 and 13, btw. They even brought up how we like cafes as opposed to fast food. I asked why. 11 yo's answers were funny, thing such as fast food not being healthy and that cafes are fancy (huh? Nah, they are just very cool) but then he realized the true answer~that we prefer cafes because of the friends we have meet us there and the time spent lingering with them. They also talked about the atmosphere being more conducive (no, they did not use that word) to talking with friends: warmer and softer lighting and color pallettes. Most of the time, they have good music playing in the background.

We have also made Wednesdays our Plutarch days. On this day, our older two kiddos aged 15 (daughter) and 17.5 (son) each have a Worldviews class (Year 1 and year 3) they get to take with other homeschoolers, and this provides the perfect time for the younger two to focus together on "Nobler things," as Plutarch or Goethe would say. Even better, the boys and I thought of Philipians 4:8-12 and turned to it after our Plutarch reading of the day.

Vocubulary words from today:
trifles (which our youngest said he had just learned in his small group at church)
servile
Sophist


This was one of those really good hs days.