Fur Traders Descending the Missouri by George Caleb Bingham

Let the students spend a moment looking at the Bingham print. 

1. What do you see in this picture?  What's in the boat?  What's in the water?
2. What time of day is it?  What is the weather like?  What season is it?
3. Look at the lines.  Where do you see horizontal lines?  Vertical lines?  Diagonal lines? (lines covered in 3rd grade OK Corral)
4. What colors do you see in this print?  Do they look realistic?  How do they make you feel?  Artists use colors to give you a feeling even if they are unrealistic.  
5. Where do you see dark areas in the picture?  Where do you see light areas?  What do these different areas make your eyes do?  (Contrasting colors - light/dark, black/white make eyes jump back and forth.)
6. How do these people feel?  (warm or cool colors)
7. If you could be in this picture, what sounds you be able to hear?
8. What do you think might happen next in this picture?
9. Fur Traders Descending the Missouri is an example of a genre painting.  Genre paintings show us scenes from everyday life.  This was an everyday scene at the time it was painted in 1845.  

About the Artist

George Caleb Bingham was a leading American painter of genre subjects.  His paintings are known for careful portrayal of different types of people, and for their natural, informal quality.  He lived in Missouri for most of his life creating a series of paintings of river life.  Bingham's election scenes are remarkable studies of life in frontier towns.  

Red Boat at Argenteuil by Claude Monet

Present the next print.

1. Name the objects in this picture?  Which are the most important?  Why?
2. How is this picture different from the picture of the Fur Traders?  (detail, brush strokes)  Does it look as real?  How does the background of this picture differ from the background of the first picture?
3. Name the colors you see?  Are the colors true to life?  (blue and orange are complementary colors on the color wheel - look for the highlights of these colors and notice how they intensify each other in the painting)
4. Point out shapes you see in this print?  (circles, triangles, squares, lines)
5. Do you think the surface of the actual painting is smooth or rough?  (surface texture)
6. This print shows different landforms - river, riverbank, sky, trees, etc.  What do we call a painting that shows large areas of land?  (landscape)  Point out that the genre picture that we just looked at shows landforms, too, but that that is not the prime focus of that painting.  
7. What do you see in the foreground?  Middle ground?  Background?  
8. What picture do you like best?  Why?

About the Artist

Claude Monet is usually regarded as the Father of Impressionism.  The Impressionist artists tried to learn about nature through direct observation.  They recognized that nature is constantly changing with variable weather and lighting conditions.  The invention of the collapsible paint tube gave them the freedom to actually paint out the doors.  Before this time, paint had to be mixed a little  bit at a time in indoor studios.  The Impressionist had a new concern for the paint surface itself and often applied the paint thickly.  Using broken brushstrokes, colors were laid side by side so that the viewer's eye would fuse or blend them naturally, just as the eye sees real objects from a distance.  They no longer wished to paint the kind of images which could be captured by the newly invented camera.  The Impressionist style was rejected by art critics of the day who dismissed the paintings as sketchy and unfinished.  

Activity

Boat Stencils and Chalk Shadows

Have teacher reserve 3 projectors.  Using projectors, shine boat on wall while students outline the boat's shadow on a piece of manila paper.   Boat Stencil on next page or second self of Art Awareness closet.  Set up projectors for children to come up three at a time.  Play Monet video located in Art Awareness closet while children are waiting at their desks to trace their boat.  Lights will be dim for projectors, perfect for watching video.  Student return to their desk after tracing boat and color in a shadows to have it represent water and a reflection of the boat in the water.   Chalk located Art Awareness closet.  Ask teacher to get paper. 

or

Origami Boats -     boat        traditional boat