Edward Mitchell Bannister: Picture Study Companion

You want your children to know great art. Now you need the practical preparation that helps you teach it well.

Most resources help families decide which artists to study and which paintings to show. The Edward Mitchell Bannister Picture Study Companion answers the next question: how can I arrive at today’s picture study prepared?

This is not another curriculum or art program. It is implementation-ready support for a term with one artist. The six paintings have been chosen. The art words have been selected and defined. The places that shaped his life have been mapped. Memory sketch pages, a color palette study, and a timeline card are ready when you need them.

The preparation is already done

• No searching museum collections for public-domain paintings worth studying.
• No guessing which art words to teach, or how to explain them simply.
• No piecing together the artist’s life from scattered sources.
• No wondering where to begin, or what to do besides look at the art.

What is included

• Timeline Card: a quarter-page card with Bannister’s portrait on the front and his life, his six paintings, and a link to his artist page on the back. Print it double-sided, cut it out, and add it to your family timeline or Book of Centuries.
• Map Moments and Life Map: the six places that shaped Bannister’s life, from a seaside town in Canada to his home in Providence, Rhode Island, with a blank life map and a completed answer key. Your child fills in the map progressively as the term goes on.
• Art Words: one art word for each painting lesson, from landscape to balance, with a blank page and a completed answer key, completed progressively as the term goes on.
• Memory Sketch Pages: a clean, titled page for each of the six paintings.
• Color Palette: a palette page for the final lesson, to match the colors Bannister returned to again and again with watercolors or colored pencils.
• Masters of Picture Study Timeline: a two-page timeline of the artists in our picture study series, with Bannister set in his place in time.
• The Six Paintings: full-page prints of Streamside, Moon over a Harbor, Approaching Storm, Boat on Sea, Oak Trees, and Hay Gatherers.

A companion, not another checklist

You do not need to complete every page. The companion gives you thoughtfully prepared choices so you can select what serves your child that day. It supports a rich Charlotte Mason education without replacing the looking and the telling with worksheets.

The free lessons and Discussion Cards

The companion accompanies Kindred Thicket’s free picture study video lessons: twelve lessons that alternate between a new painting, with silent looking, narration, and an art word, and a memory sketch with a Discussion Card. The Picture Study Discussion Cards are free when you join our email list.

About the art

Edward Mitchell Bannister died in 1901, and every painting in this companion is in the public domain in the United States.

We do the planning. The books come alive. Your child does the learning.