Plate 35. Finding of Christ in the Temple. Holman Hunt. 1827-
If pictures of this sort are to be studied, every pupil in the class should have a copy. The teacher's business is to direct the pupil to individual observation and inquiry. The perpetual questions should be, What do you see? What does it mean? Why is that here? What does it contribute to the total content of the picture? What does the picture as a whole have to say? Plates [8], [9], [18], [25], [29], [33], [40], [81], [89], [93], [110], [139], [153], [159], and [167], might be mentioned among those especially worthy of this analytical and exhaustive study.
Occasionally pupils will find both interest and profit in the comparative study of a series of pictures. For example take the five plates of The Annunciation, [pages 9 and 10]. After the facts have been determined by a study of the text, the investigation may proceed as follows: What are the essential elements found in all the pictures alike? Which artist has told the story most simply and directly? The different artists have emphasized or given special attention to some one phase or phrase. Which has embodied more perfectly the first, or the second, or the third? Which has introduced elements of his own? Why? Do they help? Which has, on the whole, told the story most vividly? Which most beautifully? A study of this group of pictures in the light of such notes as will be found printed therewith, will enable any teacher to formulate for himself a plan for studying any other group of pictures.
In such study it is essential that each pupil be supplied with a complete set of the pictures to be compared.
Madonna. Dagnan-Bouveret.
But the picture itself is sometimes not a thing to be consciously analyzed and inventoried; it is simply a thing of beauty, "its own excuse for being;" it is something to be received as a whole with thankfulness, like the odor of wild grape vines, or the form of a calla lily, or the color of a sunrise, or the music of wind in pine trees. Such a picture is this Madonna of the Shop, by Dagnan-Bouveret. One may think for a moment now and then of how well the picture is composed, of how perfect a master of his art the man must be who can make spots of paint suggest wood and metal, linen and wool, soft flesh and softer light, but the mind returns again and again to the contemplation of the wondrous sweet face of the Virgin, whose deep eyes see unspeakable things. One comes to love such a picture as a dear familiar friend, and to yield to its gentle influence as to moonlight upon the sea. The contemplation of such pictures is one of the purest pleasures of life, a foretaste of the sight of "the King in his Beauty."
THE GREAT PAINTERS' GOSPEL.
