‘Picture-Painting’ [HE/2.3]
‘Picture-painting’ is a more advanced variation of the ‘sight-seeing’ described before. Rather than making and collectively sharing observations about an environment (surroundings), ‘picture-painting’ involves looking carefully at an outlying landscape and then singularly producing a description without having to look. Although children easily notice the “near and minute,” a mother may need to help them see “the wide and distant.” She can help by giving an example herself of picture-painting, perhaps introducing the idea as a “gallery” of pictures in one’s head. The natural scenes remembered will be a means of refreshment and delight later, as one can call them clearly and completely to memory whenever one wishes. Also, the valuable habit of seeing fully and in detail is cultivated.
Study Questions
These answers express my personal beliefs, opinions, and interpretations.
1.What is meant by ‘picture-painting’?
‘Picture-painting’ involves carefully studying an outlying landscape and reproducing a description without having to look.
2.Give an example.
Is Mason asking for student-teachers to reproduce a landscape from their own memory? (See under “Personal Application.”)
3.Show the value of this exercise.
These appended questions, I believe, were for students in Mason’s teacher college. (The appendix is entitled “Questions for the Use of Students.”) Following the second direction as it does, I imagine this asks the students to share what they learned by trying their own ‘picture-painting.’
Such an exercise would be valuable to demonstrate 1) the lack of true ‘seeing’ in many, 2) the satisfaction enjoyed by others in remembering well a favorite scene, and 3) the effort required in remembering and especially in ‘reproducing.’ Narration is not easy, and many teachers have a new respect for the method (and a more realistic expectation for the children) once they attempt a narration for themselves.
4.What caution must be borne in mind?
The effort of reproducing observations is a great one and should be required only now and then. (Remember that these are young children; the book is written about the education of children between 6 and 9 years of age.)
5.What invaluable habit should this play tend to form?
The practice of ‘picture-painting’ helps develop the habit of “seeing fully and in detail,” and therefore the ability to accurately reproduce those observations.
6.What is the mother’s part in the play?
The mother’s part in the play seems to be one of inspiration, of planting a seed. She introduces the idea of a mental ‘picture-gallery,’ she gives an example of her own ‘picture-painting,‘ she requires the exercise “now and then,” but leaves much of it to be “unconscious.” The mother is also to protect the objectivity of the exercise; that is, the child should enjoy it for its own sake and not as a display of cleverness. For this reason, mother should not have the child repeat his narrations for an audience (even of his father), and she should not discuss his abilities with others in his hearing.
7.What is the after-reward for taking pains in the act of seeing?
At any time one can call to mind the scenes committed to memory. The clear remembrance of beautiful, natural scenes may bring rest (a mental ‘holiday,’ as Mason describes it) in the midst of urban surroundings or stressful circumstances (may perhaps even be a solution for insomnia). Mason quotes some appropriate lines by Wordsworth, but the ones I was thinking of are more familiar to readers today:—
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
These rewards which Mason mentions are particular to picture-painting, but the habits of correct observation and reproduction which are cultivated apply also to other areas of life—most pertinently, to school-work.
Personal Notes
The value of ‘sight-seeing’ and ‘picture-painting’ to the habit of truth-telling is mentioned by Mason several times in her volumes.
In the previous section, ‘Sight-Seeing,’ one of the children enthusiastically describes an apple tree: “I should think there are a million apples on it, all ripe and rosy!” The mother’s response is gently chiding: “A million, Fanny?” “Well a great many, mother,” the child corrects herself. “I don’t know how many.”
Many would consider ‘Fanny’s’ hyperbole harmless, but Mason believed exaggeration worked against the habit of truth-telling, which includes speaking no deliberate lies (negative aspect) but also care in making clear and accurate statements (positive aspect). The necessary precursor is correct observation; Mason’s simple games of ‘sight-seeing’ and ‘picture-painting’ are as much exercises for young characters as they are delightful ways to enjoy nature.
These favorite quotes come to my mind:
Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise, you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.
—C.S. Lewis
The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.
—Wendell Berry, “Imagination in Place”
‘Fanny’ makes another appearance in Mason’s book The Formation of Character. An aunt advises Fanny’s parents on how to teach their imaginative child to “revere truth, and [distinguish] between the facts of life where truth is all in all, and the wide realms of make-believe, where fancy may have free play.” One of the truth-telling exercises the aunt recommends sounds very similar to picture-painting. “[G]ive her daily, or half-a-dozen times a day, lessons in truth. Send her to the window: ‘Look out Fanny, and tell me what you see.’ She comes back, having seen a cow where there is a horse. She looks again and brings a true report, and you teach her that it is not true to say the thing which is not.”
Personal Application
•Do some picture-painting of my own with an especially beautiful landscape I want to remember, and narrate my observations in a journal entry.
Resources
Other Home Education Commentaries
Becoming Three: Charlotte Mason Volume I Part II.1-VI A growing time
Sparrow Tree Square: Charlotte Mason Monday Part 22
Next Time...
Mason now turns from landscapes to the particulars of nature. Next we will learn about values and methods of knowing the Flowers and Trees.
Friday, July 20, 2012
I am rereading Home Education, the first in Charlotte Mason’s six-volume series on her theory and method of education. This time I will expand my reading by narration and personal notes—guided by the study questions provided in the appendix.
You are welcome to join me! Mason’s complete series is available for free online reading at Ambleside Online. I’d love to read your thoughts in a comment or email.