Art

Match the Painting With the Century

 

Today's Snack: As long as we're matching, let's match a baked potato with some shredded cheddar cheese and a little butter. Wash it down with a cool glass of all-American milk.

 

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Supplies:

Internet access to project these paintings on a big screen

Piece of scrap paper and pencil for each student

 

 

Artwork is practically like a history book for any given country.

 

            Here are several famous American paintings. They are numbered from 1 to 8, but that doesn't mean that that is in chronological order - the oldest to the most recent.

 

            That's YOUR job!

 

First, write down the following eight years on a piece of scrap paper. Each of them is the year in which one of these eight artworks was painted.

 

Now look at these paintings, projected on a big screen, and write down in which century the painting was painted, or in which century the event that is shown happened.

 

Look for clues in the objects that are shown in the painting, and rely on your knowledge of how our country grew and changed, and how our art styles changed with it.

 

You can ask to see the paintings more than once if you get stuck.

 

Here are your three choices:

 

1700s

 

1800s

 

1900s

 

#1.

 

 

 

 

 

#2.

 

 

 

 

 

#3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

#4.

 

 

 

 

 

#5.

 

 

 

 

 

#6.

 

 

 

 

 

#7.

 

 

 

 

 

#8.

 

 

 

 

Now here are the answers. How did you do?

 

1776, Washington Crossing the Delaware, Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze

 

1850, Boston Harbor, Fitz Hugh Lane

1871, The Old Stagecoach, Jonathan Eastman Johnson

 

1909, The Broncho Buster, Frederic Remington

1930, American Gothic, Grant Wood

1951, Untitled, Jackson Pollock

1967, Sunday Morning Breakfast, Romare Howard Bearden

1971, Sunny #4, Alex Katz

 

If you're interested in any of these artworks or painters, it would be a fun project to research them and report back to the group how that artist fit in to American history.