Washington Winter Show 2016

53 This page is sponsored by Janis Buchanan and Elizabeth Hague in honor of The Founders Board of St. John's Community Services Figure 7: Paul Gauguin, Fatata te Miti (By the Sea), 1892, oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Chester Dale Collection. Figure 8: Family Guide: French Painting at the National Gallery of Art, 11. Susanna Fields-Kuehl created this frame for children’s sketches incorporating elements from Gauguin’s Fatata te Miti and other works found in the same museum gallery. riveting as John Singleton Copley’s Watson and the Shark (Figure 5). A planned activity entitled “Triumph over Adversity,” asked “Would you want an image of your worst memory?” Brook Watson did. He had Copley paint him as a fourteen-year-old, fallen backward from a boat into the jaws of a tiger shark. He would lose part of his leg during that attack in Havana Harbor but go on to become Lord Mayor of London. The strategy employed by the guide was to get young viewers into the water with Watson, so to speak, to experience the scene, then write about it. After being asked to identify specific actions Watson’s mates took in an effort to save him, they were prompted to describe what they might be thinking if they were in Watson’s unfortunate shoes, or if they were the man spearing the shark or throwing the rope—or if they were the shark itself. The exercise finished with an active task in which children designed their own personal heraldic device based on Watson’s coat-of-arms, which proudly includes his severed leg (Figure 6). Drawing exercises like this proved to be the most popular among our test groups. The simple explanation for their appeal is that children everywhere like to draw. Beyond that, drawing gives children time to engage creatively with the works of art they have been asked to look at in specific ways, and to process the big ideas that have been introduced. Uncontested favorite with test groups was the activity “Draw as You Dream” in the French family guide. Artists explored in this guide range from Théodore Rousseau to Paul Gauguin. It attempts to lead children to discover for themselves the artistic goals and strategies of impressionist and post-impressionist painters, including the development of painting