Eye for Art: Focusing on Great Artists and Their Work
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preface For the past eleven years the National Gallery of Art has issued a family quarterly that included an Inside Scoop featuring artists and works from the museum This book is a collection of those Scoops updated revised and expanded The book is grouped around seven general themes and highlights works from different time periods to encourage comparisons among them We hope the book will inspire children to explore and develop an eye for art We are grateful to the MSST Foundation for its generosity in making this publication possible and especially to Nancy Furlotti for her personal enthusiasm for the Gallery’s mission to engage family audiences Lynn Pearson Russell Head Division of Education
chapter one studying nature Slowing down to look closely at nature is an art By examining the colors and shapes of birds or flowers observing the effects of light at different moments or noticing the ways a landscape can change over time artists find inspiration in the natural world This chapter introduces artists who are captivated by nature and study it closely John Constable depicted his native English countryside with fresh attention to atmosphere Martin Johnson Heade and John James Audubon traveled widely to document birds in their natural habitats Claude Monet cultivated his private gardens as subjects to contemplate painting them in changing seasons Georgia O’Keeffe found beautiful abstractions in the details of a single flower Andy Goldsworthy uses natural materials to create sculptures that often become part of nature As you study the different artists in this chapter think about how artists help us see the natural world in new ways
