The Parents' Review
A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture
"Education is an atmosphere, a discipline, a life."
Art for Children.
By T.G. Rooper
In 1883 a society was founded in London mainly through the efforts of Miss Christie, named the Art for Schools Association. The executive committee describe their efforts their objects to be
(1). To negotiate with Art Publishers for the purchase of Engravings, Photographs, Etchings, Chromo-lithographs, &c., on advantageous terms, and to supply them at reduced prices to Schools.
(2). To reproduce Works of Art especially suitable for Schools, and to publish the same at the lowest prices possible.
(3). To lend, and occasionally give, groups of framed Engravings, Photographs, Etchings, &c., to poor Schools.
(4). To assist in, or otherwise promote, Oral instruction, such as many explain the Works of Art in our National Collections, and those supplied to Schools by the help of the Association.
Among those who patronized the Society from the commencement were Sir F. Leighton, Mr. W. Morris, Mr. Robert Browning, Mr. Matthew Arnold, Bishop Temple, and Mr. Mundella. Many schools in London, both Voluntary and Board, lost no time in availing themselves of the advantages of the Association, and before long branches were started in other towns, so that its pictures are now hanging on the walls of many class-rooms in Leeds, Bradford, Birmingham, and elsewhere.
If, we are told, it is worth while to adorn a school-room at all, the right decoration next to Maps and Diagrams, is surely a supplement to a Christmas number of an illustrated paper, or at least nothing more imaginative than one of Landseer's Dogs or Stags or Squirrels. Only a vagary of enthusiasm can suppose that children will profit by Millet's "Angelus," Burne Jones's "Golden Stairs," or "Singing Boys," by Luca Della Robia. Yet theory and practice alike prove that this judgment, which perhaps commends itself to nineteen people out of twenty who have not thought about the matter, and is therefore rightly called common sense, is very far from corresponding with the facts. In confirmation of the theoretical side of the question it is enough to cite the classical passage which expresses the whole philosophy of the matter in a few words. "Young citizens," says Plato in the Republic, "must not be allowed to grow up amongst images of evil, lest their souls assimilate the ugliness of their surroundings. Rather they should be like men living in a beautiful and healthy place; from everything that they see and hear, loveliness like a breeze should pass into their souls and teach them without their knowing it the truth of which beauty is a manifestation." In the study of art "liking comes by looking." Children cannot learn what a beautiful work of art really is unless they have an opportunity of seeing good specimens almost every day of their lives. A love for the study of beautiful things is gained by a slow process; it cannot be dinned into the mind like the multiplication table, it was never imparted by the rapid method of acquiring knowledge which is known as "cramming." It is
Like the heaven's glorious sun,
Who doubts that children ought to be fold of the deeds of good and great men who lived before them where they live now, and loved the land and sacrificed for it all that they had, even to their lives? It is equally incumbent on parents to subject the growing child to the influence of beautiful works of art, for moral beauty is not in its roots different from, but essentially one with, the beauty which we learn to recognize in the handwork of the artist. Let a child learn to discover the beauties of a good picture, and he is helped thereby to recognize the beauty of right conduct, and what is more -- the ugliness of the opposite.
Some critics who approve these principles nevertheless are skeptical as to the children's power of appreciation. Do the little ones, as a matter of fact, care for Raphael's Sistine Madonna? The appeal to experience is likely to yield varied replies. Parents and others in charge of children differ widely i