This lesson revolves around a single painting entitled Work, painted by Ford Madox Brown between 1852 and 1865. Using Fastest Finger First pupils are encouraged to explore the full detail of this fascinating painting before role playing the wealth of interesting characters shown, so a narrative is built up.
Finally pupils explore the deeper meaning behind the painting by putting the artist in the hot seat so they can understand what his intentions were.
Learning objectives
- Pupils are able to select images from the painting that they feel have been included for a specific reason.
- Pupils see how the meaning of an image changes immediately you ask who produced it
- They learn to look for possible deeper meaning knowing that people produce images for different purposes. Here it is to glorify the work of a hard-working navvy not to show what streets looked like
- They are able devise historically valid questions to fire at artist
Step 1
Start with a very short introduction explaining the title and what scene it is meant to represent. Keep it literal at this stage. Don’t mention any deeper meaning. That’s for later.
To explore the painting in detail, provide pupils with an A3 copy
