Part 4

One day a man came to their town who could draw any person’s picture while he waited. Then, too, he could cut a silhouette picture or side view of the face out of black paper. Joshua followed him about all day, and the two became great friends. The artist gave Joshua lessons and the boy soon learned to draw as well as his teacher. We are told that it was through the friendship of this strolling artist that a rich man’s attention was called to Joshua’s wish to be an artist, and this rich man finally persuaded the father to let Joshua go to London to study.

It was about this time, too, that while at church he drew a picture of the minister on his thumb nail. From this tiny sketch he painted a large portrait on a piece of sail which he found on the river bank near an old boathouse. His paints were some the sailors used to paint their boats. When his father saw this portrait, which was so very like the minister, he knew that his son would surely be a great artist, and he gave up all thought of trying to make a doctor of him.

In London, Reynolds studied painting in earnest, and wrote home, “While I am doing this, I am the happiest creature alive.” He painted the portraits of several well-known men, and soon became very popular.

Then came Admiral Keppel and the wonderful voyage on the ship which he commanded. Upon Sir Joshua’s return home he painted a fine portrait of his friend, the Admiral, which every one wanted to see many times.

It was not long before Sir Joshua Reynolds became a rich man, and bought a beautiful home with a large yard full of beautiful trees. His sister came to keep house for him, and later his little niece Offy came to live with him. He loved children dearly, and always kept pets and playthings for them. He entertained them so happily that they always wanted to come to see him.

=Questions about the artist.= What did Sir Joshua Reynolds’s father and mother want him to be when he grew up? How many brothers and sisters did he have? How did his drawings compare with theirs? Why did they not draw with paper and pencils? Where were they allowed to draw? What did they call Joshua? Of what did he make his first good picture? What did people say about it? How old was he then? How did he spoil his number paper? What did his father write at the top of his paper? Tell about the strolling artist and what he did for Joshua. Tell about Joshua’s portrait of the minister. What did his father decide after seeing this portrait? What else did Sir Joshua Reynolds do? Tell about his house and yard. What kind of pictures did he paint? Why do you think he was considered a great artist?

THE SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS

=Studying the picture.= Several days before the lesson is to be taken up, the picture to be studied should be placed where every pupil can see it.

First of all, the children should find out for themselves what is in the picture. The questions accompanying the story of each picture are intended to help them to do this.

=Language work.= The pupils should be encouraged in class to talk freely and naturally. In this way the lesson becomes a language exercise in which the pupils will gain in freedom of expression and in the ability to form clear mental images.

If a lesson does not occupy the entire drawing period, the children should be asked to retell the story of the picture.

=Dramatization and drawing.= Most of the stories told by the pictures lend themselves readily to dramatization and, whenever practicable, such stories should be acted out. The stories also offer numerous interesting situations that may be used as subjects for drawing lessons.

=The review lesson.= The review lesson should cover all pictures and artists studied throughout the year. At this time other pictures available by the same artists should be on exhibition.

The review work may be conducted as a contest in which the pictures are held up, one at a time, while the class writes the name of the picture and the artist on slips of paper which have been prepared and numbered for that purpose. One teacher who used this device surprised her class by presenting those whose lists were correct with their choice of any of the large-sized Perry pictures studied.

Many teachers, however, will prefer to use this time for composition work, although the description of pictures is often given as an English lesson. Pupils may write a description of their favorite picture. In fact, the lessons can be made to correlate with history, geography, English, spelling, reading, or nature study.

In any event the real purpose of the work is that the pupils shall become so familiar with the pictures that they will recognize them as old friends whenever and wherever they may see them.

It is hoped that acquaintance with the picture and the interest awakened by its story will grow into a fuller appreciation and understanding of the artist’s work. Thus the children will have many happy hours and will learn to love the good, the true, and the beautiful in everything about them.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ The phonetic pronunciation for two of the painters' names include the characters [o˔]. The ˔ diacritial mark is an "up-tack" and should appear on top of the vowel. This combination doesn't appear in any common character set, so they have been set separately. ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ The use of a caret (^) before a letter, or letters, shows that the following letter or letters was intended to be a superscript, as in S^t Bartholomew or 10^{th} Century. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_); text that was bold by “equal” signs (=bold=).