Your Paintings
For art teachers of all age groups, this makes Your Paintings a valuable teaching resource.
For history teachers, it could be an even richer resource. The UK’s national collection of oil paintings is probably the best pre-photographic visual record of UK history and society. There are paintings showing everyday life, as well as the great historical events of the last millennium.
There are also paintings that tell us about the physical and human geography of Britain, paintings of costumes and theatrical productions, paintings of (mostly Christian) religious scenes and imagery, evenscientific advances.
With the autumn term just beginning, there are plans to publish a series of blog posts by teachers, with ideas for lessons, and links to interesting paintings that will help with classroom teaching.
Here are the first two:
As well as these blog posts, there are guided tours of the paintings on the site, by celebrities, artists and art critics, to bring the stories behind some of the paintings to life. Subjects range from the art of war and Britain in the 20th century, to romance, Shakespeare and Roman and Greek myths and legends. And once the whole collection is digitised, there will be paintings from every part of the UK on the site.
Visit Your Paintings here