Jennifer M. Ports
Lesson Objectives:
Students will be able to describe gender roles and class distinctions in colonial America, analyze 17th and 18th century colonial portraits as portrayals of colonial society, and create a narrative to accompany a 17th or 18th century colonial portrait.
Lesson Steps:
Have students independently complete a "See, Think, Wonder" for an 18th Century portrait painting, perhaps using John Smibert's "Dean Berkeley and His Entourage (The Bermuda Group)," or any other portrait on a three column graphic organizer. Challenge students to come up with as many ideas as they can for what they see (think colors, objects, foreground, background, etc.), what they think they see (interpretations based on what they saw), and what questions they have. Discuss their ideas, making sure to hit on the subjects' class and gender roles based on what they observe. Lastly, reveal the background and details of the painting to the students and introduce the lesson's topic.
Read together the last 4 paragraphs from the CliffNotes' article entitled "Colonial Society and Economy" so students have background. Teacher should use the comments made during the initiation and the reading as the basis for a discussion. Since we are connecting these themes to art, the teacher should also teach about the purpose of portraits at the time, and the process of commissioning and completing a painting.
Using a projector, place an image of a female celebrity or artist next to one of a male celebrity or artist that most students would be familiar with on display. Have them discuss what they see, think, and wonder together as a class. Have them then make observations about their class and gender based on details they see in the images, getting them to rely on what they see instead of background knowledge. Questions to ask after the "See, Think, Wonder" could include: What class are these people from and how do we know? How is the male portrayed? How is the female portrayed? How might each image have been different if the person were of a lower class? Use this discussion to get them to see how these images are staged, just as portraits from colonial America were.
Break students into groups of 2 or 3. Have the groups sit together so they all are facing each other. Review with your students your expectation for productive, meaningful discussion and on task behaviors. Remind them that one person should be talking at a time so others can listen, and review appropriate ways to suggest new ideas, agree or disagree with someone, and get the members of the group back on task.
Give each group a different portrait from the time period, but if it makes sense that two images go together, such as one of a man and another of his wife, go ahead and keep them together. Make sure at least one group has a painting from the 17th century even if all the others have ones from the 18th century. Provide each group with a short reading about their painting so they might better understand the subjects. Have each group complete a worksheet on the image(s) before them. The worksheet should have them identify the title, who painted it and when, who the intended audience was, and what they as a group see, think they see, and wonder about. It should also have them answer some of the following questions: How is/are the subject(s) portrayed, how is this shown, and why do you think so? How is/are the subject(s) positioned and what does this body language communicate to the viewer? What objects were chosen to be portrayed with the painted and why do you think they were chosen? What social class are the portrayed a part of and how do we know? It is fine if more than one group has a certain painting, but groups that have two paintings be made a group of three, while groups with one painting be made a group of 2. Ideas of paintings to complete this with: 1)
John Freake
and
Mrs. Freake and Baby Mary
by the Freake–Gibbs painter, 2)
Elizabeth Moffatt Sherburne
by John Greenwood, 3)
Mr. Isaac Smith
and
Mrs. Isaac Smith (Elizabeth Storer)
by John Singleton Copley, 4)
Portrait of Jeremiah Lee
and
Portrait of Mrs. Jeremiah Lee
(nee Martha Swett
) by John Singleton Copley, 5)
William Buckland
by Charles Wilson Peale, 6)
Ezra Stiles
by Samuel King, 7)
Nicholas Boylston
by John Singleton Copley.
After giving them about 10–15 min. to work on the worksheets, tell the students that they will present what they have learned by creating a tableau of their painting for their class. Give students time to write narratives for the people portrayed in the portraits and plan how they will create their tableau. The narrative should explain who they are, what they think, what their life might be like, their role in their family, and any other details that might get at their class in society and gender role. Students can use the readings that accompanied their paintings, but a bit of speculation in their narratives would be fine too. For the tableau part, each group should get in front of the class and stand in the same positions as the people in the portraits, trying to mimic their bodies and using as many similar props as possible (tables, chairs, writing utensils, globes, the whiteboard to draw objects in the background if wanted, etc.) Each group member must participate in some way. One student could act out the portrait, while the other reads the narrative they wrote for their person. If the group had two paintings and three group members, they could each take turns with different roles, or have one person read both narratives while the two others act out the paintings at the same time.
Have each group take turns getting in front of the class to present their painting and some basic information about it before creating their tableau in front of the class and reading their narratives.
To close, have students complete a "3–2–1" where they list three main ideas from the lesson, two new understandings, and one question they have on the topic.
Assessment Idea:
Have students, perhaps for homework or as a follow up the next class, plan to commission their own painting. Have them pretend they are from the time period and decide how they would want to be portrayed, using what they know about class and gender from the time period, and how they would go about portraying themselves that way. They should decide who would be in the painting, what would be in the foreground, what would be in the background, what objects would be present, how they would position their body, what they would wear, etc.