Pictures for Schools: visual education in the classroom and the art gallery

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on Pictures for Schools, an art patronage scheme established in postwar Britain by the artist and educationalist Nan Youngman (1906–1995) to sell affordable works of art to educational establishments. Highlighting the use of works of art as a pedagogical tool, Pictures for Schools is contextualised within a wider programme of visual education, which encouraged citizens to be critical observers of the places and objects which surrounded them everyday in postwar Britain. The paper explores the ways in which artworks offered children a critical education across two types of educational spaces, the classroom and the art gallery. Using material from Youngman’s archives, it visits a series of educational spaces where, in the decade leading up to the Second World War, and influenced by the educationalists Marion Richardson and Henry Morris, Youngman established the the value of the active, participatory form of art education she later promoted through Pictures for Schools. The paper then explores the ways in which Pictures for Schools worked to develop children’s skills as critical observers. At the first Pictures for Schools exhibition, held in 1947 at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, children voted for their favourite exhibit. At later exhibitions, held annually until 1969, children were given questionnaires which encouraged them to look closely at the artworks. This paper argues that in doing this, Pictures for Schools aimed to develop the critical capacities of future citizens who were asked to play an active part in postwar reconstruction and society.

KEYWORDS:

• Nan Youngman
• Pictures for Schools
• school buildings
• Society for Education through Art
• visual education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ There are two exceptions: 1951, when no exhibition was held, and 1957, when no London venue could be found and the exhibition was held instead at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester. A parallel series of Pictures for Welsh Schools took place from 1951 until 1987. A one-off Pictures for Scottish Schools exhibition was held at the McLellan Gallery in Glasgow in 1967.

² Andrew Saint, Towards a Social Architecture: The Role of School Building in Post-War England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987); and Geraint Franklin, ed., England’s Schools 1962–88: A Thematic Study (Portsmouth: English Heritage, 2012).

³ For a discussion of the Leicestershire Education Authority Collection, one of the largest, see Bryan Robertson, British Sculpture and Painting from the Collection of the Leicestershire Education Authority (London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1968).

⁴ Catherine Burke, “The Decorated School: Past Potency and Present Patronage,” FORUM 54, no. 3 (2012): 465–72; Burke, “The Decorated School: Cross-disciplinary Research in the History of Art as Integral to the Design of Educational Environments,” Paedagogica Historica 49, no. 6 (2013): 813–27; and Catherine Burke, Peter Cunningham, and Jeremy Howard, eds., The Decorated School: Essays in the Visual Culture of Schooling (London: Black Dog, 2013).

⁵ Burke, “The Decorated School,” 827.

⁶ Prior to 1953, the SEA was known as the Society for Education in Art (emphasis mine).

⁷ Joy for Ever: How to use art to change the world and its price in the market, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, March 29–9 December 2019; and John Ruskin, The Political Economy of Art (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1868).

⁸ Kate Nichols, “Transformative Beauty: Art Museums in Industrial Britain,” Visual Culture in Britain 15, no. 3 (2015): 369–71.

⁹ Edward Morris and Timothy Stevens, The Walker Art Gallery Liverpool 1873–2000 (Bristol: Sansom and Co., 2013).

¹⁰ Stuart Eagles, “Thomas Coglan Horsfall, and Manchester Art Museum and University Settlement,” The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education (2009), www.infed.org/settlements/manchester_art_museum_and_university_settlement.htm (accessed October 26, 2020).

¹¹ Robert Snape, “The New Leisure, Voluntarism and Social Reconstruction in Inter-War Britain,” Contemporary British History 29, no. 1 (2015): 51–83.

¹² Ian Grosvenor, “‘The Art of Seeing’: Promoting Design in Education in 1930s England,” Paedagogica Historica 41, nos 4&5 (2005): 507–34; and Sue Breakell, “‘The Exercise of a Peculiar Art-Skill’: Kenneth Clark’s Design Advocacy and the Council of Industrial Design,” Visual Culture in Britain 16, no. 1 (2015): 42–66.

¹³ David Matless, “Visual Culture and Geographical Citizenship: England in the 1940s,” Journal of Historical Geography 22, no. 4 (1996): 424–35; Landscape and Englishness (London: Reaktion, 1998).

¹⁴ Matless, “Visual Culture,” 425.

¹⁵ Matless, Landscape and Englishness, 260.

¹⁶ Ibid., 202.

¹⁷ Ibid., 234.

¹⁸ Becky Conekin, “‘Here is the Modern World Itself’: The Festival of Britain’s Imagining of the Future,” in Moments of Modernity: Reconstructing Britain, 1945–1964, ed. Becky Conekin, Frank Mort, and Chris Waters (London: Rivers Oram Press, 1999), 143–51, 134–5.

¹⁹ Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957), 343.

²⁰ Central Advisory Council for Education (England) Out of School (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1948). Also known as the Clarke Report, this report was chaired by Sir Fred Clarke of the Institute of Education.

²¹ Ministry of Education, The New Secondary Education: Ministry of Education Pamphlet Number Nine (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, 1947), 41.

²² Ibid.

²³ Committee of the Secondary School Examinations Council, The Norwood Report: Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1943), 54.

²⁴ RR Tomlinson, Children as Artists (London: The King Penguin Books, 1947).

²⁵ Laura Tisdall, A Progressive Education? How Childhood Changed in Mid-Twentieth Century English and Welsh Schools (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020).

²⁶ David Thistlewood, introduction to Histories of Art and Design Education: Cole to Coldstream, ed. Thistlewood (Harlow: Longman in association with the National Society for Education in Art and Design, 1992), 8–13; Bruce Holdsworth, “Public Art Education in England Between the Two World Wars” (Master’s thesis, Manchester Polytechnic, 1983); and Bruce Holdsworth, “Marion Richardson (1892–1946)” in Readings in Primary Art Education, ed. Steve Herne, Sue Cox, and Robert Watts (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2009), 55–72.

²⁷ AD Campbell, “Marion Richardson and the Crab’s Claw,” Studies in Design Education Craft and Technology, 11, no. 1 (1978): 15–21.

²⁸ Catherine Deepwell, “Women Artists in Britain Between the Wars?” (unpublished PhD thesis, University of London, 1991).

²⁹ Holdsworth, “Marion Richardson,” 66.

³⁰ John Swift, “Marion Richardson’s Contribution to Art Teaching,” in Histories of Art and Design Education: Cole to Coldstream, ed. Thistlewood (Harlow: Longman in association with the National Society for Education in Art and Design, 1992), 118–30, 118.

³¹ Nan Youngman’s autobiography (typewritten manuscript, c.1987), 89.

³² Marion Richardson, Art and the Child (London: University of London Press, 1948), 55.

³³ Thistlewood, “Introduction.”

³⁴ Swift, “Marion Richardson’s Contribution.”

³⁵ Richardson, Art and the Child, 34.

³⁶ Nick Arnfield, “Pictures for Schools” (Master’s thesis, University of Manchester, 1985).

³⁷ Richardson, Art and the Child, 23.

³⁸ C.B Cox and A.E. Dyson, eds., Fight for Education: A Black Paper (London: Critical Quarterly Society, 1968).

³⁹ Roy Lowe, The Death of Progressive Education: How Teachers Lost Control of the Classroom (London: Routledge, 2007).

⁴⁰ Board of Education, Report of Inspection of Highbury Hill High School for Girls, Islington, London, October 6–October 9, 1936, 10.

⁴¹ Sue Malvern, “Nan Youngman: Artist and Educator,” in Nan Youngman: 1906–1905, ed. Julian Rea (London: Morley Gallery, 1997), 25–9; and Read, Education through Art (1943; repr. London: Faber and Faber, 1958).

⁴² Nan Youngman, “The Pictures for Schools Exhibitions, organised by the Society for Education through Art, with the support of the Arts Council of Great Britain” (paper presented at the conference of the International Society of Education through Art, Coventry, August 1970), 1.

⁴³ Letter from Graham Sutherland to Nan Youngman, November 20, 1934.

⁴⁴ Nan Youngman’s autobiography, 169.

⁴⁵ Tony Jeffs, Henry Morris: Village Colleges, Community Education and the Ideal Order (Nottingham: Educational Heretics Press, 1989).

⁴⁶ Harry Ree, Educator Extraordinary: The Life and Achievement of Henry Morris (London: Longman Group, 1973).

⁴⁷ Ibid.

⁴⁸ Willem van der Eyken and Barry Turner, “Henry Morris: 1889–1961” in Adventures in Education, ed. Van der Eyken and Turner (London: Allen Lane The Penguin Press, 1969), 145–81.

⁴⁹ Draft of letter from Nan Youngman to Henry Morris, June 28, 1944.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Sybil Marshall, An Experiment in Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963; repr. 1968).

⁵² Cambridgeshire Education Committee, Joint General Purposes and Estimates and Elementary Education Sub-Committee, February 6, 1945, 2.

⁵³ Jeffs, Henry Morris, 58.

⁵⁴ Jeannine Fiedler and Peter Feirerabend, eds., Bauhaus (Cologne: Konemann, 1999).

⁵⁵ Stuart Macdonald, The History and Philosophy of Art Education (London: University of London Press, 1970).

⁵⁶ Nan Youngman, “The work of a county art adviser,” undated, 1–2.

⁵⁷ Ibid.

⁵⁸ Malvern, “Nan Youngman.”

⁵⁹ The Cambridgeshire Collection of Original Artworks for Children was one of the last in the country to continue to lend artworks to schools; most of the artworks were auctioned in May 2017 by Cheffins: https://www.cambstimes.co.uk/news/cambridgeshire-county-council-set-to-unload-its-entire-400-or-so-paintings-built-up-over-nearly-70-years-as-part-of-children-s-collection-1-4213931 (accessed October 28, 2019).

⁶⁰ George Scrivener reviewing An Experiment in Education by Sybil Marshall, World of Books, February 23, 1963, 2, .

⁶¹ Ibid.

⁶² Pictures for Schools sending-in form 1948.

⁶³ Wendy Koop, “Report on Voting,” Athene 4, no. 4 (1949): 160.

⁶⁴ Pictures for Schools art exhibition, Children’s Hour, BBC Home Service, February 22, 1955, 5.

⁶⁵ Observation Post, presented by Richard Bennett, no. 22, May 30, 1947, 8.

⁶⁶ Nan Youngman, Untitled script, 1954, 1.

⁶⁷ Letter from Eileen Graham to Joan Bartlett, April 13, 1968.

⁶⁸ Letter from Eileen Graham to Joan Bartlett, January 18, 1968.

⁶⁹ Youngman, Untitled script, 1954, 1.

⁷⁰ Youngman, “The Pictures for Schools Exhibitions,” 2.

⁷¹ Nan Youngman, SEA Bulletin, May 1966.

⁷² Ibid., 12.

⁷³ Letter from EO Burge, Headmistress, Llanrumney County Secondary School, undated.

⁷⁴ Ibid.

⁷⁵ Brian Saxton, “The Classroom Art Connoisseur,” Daily Mail, February 16, 1966.

⁷⁶ Eileen Anderson, “Children’s Art Choice,” Western Mail, February 25, 1966.

⁷⁷ Letter from Eileen Graham to Joan Bartlett, January 18, 1968.

⁷⁸ Youngman, SEA Bulletin, May 1966, 13.

⁷⁹ Ibid., 8.

⁸⁰ Pictures for Schools completed questionnaires, 1969.

⁸¹ Ibid.

⁸² Ibid.

⁸³ Ibid.

⁸⁴ Ibid.

⁸⁵ Nan Youngman, “Pictures for Schools,” Art and Artists 4, no. 7 (1969): 45.

⁸⁶ Pictures for Schools completed questionnaires, 1969.

⁸⁷ “This is what makes a child choose a picture,” Daily Telegraph, February 18, 1966.

⁸⁸ Youngman, SEA bulletin, May 1966, 13.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Natalie Bradbury

Natalie Bradbury completed a PhD entitled “Pictures for Schools: Art, Education and Reconstruction” at the University of Central Lancashire in 2018.