Art Masterpiece: Snap The Whip, 1872

by Winslow Homer

Keywords:line, movement

Grade:4th

Activity:Pipe Cleaner Action

Figure

Meet the Artist:

  • He was born in Boston in 1836.
  • He was always interested in art, in part because his mother was a skilled painter and always encouraged her son to sketch what he saw. He painted in a style called realism, meaning that we can plainly see and understand what he painted. The subjects were realistic looking.
  • He didn’t receive much art schooling, he preferred to learn things on his own. He believed one should study nature, not other paintings.
  • He started drawing illustrations for magazines by age 19. He was a successful artist by 21, painting images he saw of the Civil War.
  • After the war, he settled back into the rural northeast and painted what he saw. He loved painting people in a landscape setting (a painting that has strong elements of nature in it like trees, mountains, etc.). He loved using watercolors best.
  • His early career consisted of painting pictures of people in their natural rural settings. Over time, he changed from doing people in landscapes to people in seascapes (pictures involving water).
  • He received many awards for his paintings and became a very important American painter.
  • Homer was a very shy man who said very little about his life and artwork. He believed that his paintings spoke for him. He lived until 1910.

Background info:

Snap the whip was a popular children’s game in the 1800s and early 1900s. Children held hands tightly and then ran very fast. The first kids in line stop suddenly, yanking the other kids sideways. This causes the ones at the end to break free from the chain. Winning involved being the last person to not get broken from the chain. The painting portrays children playing this game in a landscape.

Possible Questions:

  • What is happening in the picture? What kind of game are the children playing? Have you ever seen children play a game like this? What kinds of games do you like to play?
  • Have you ever seen children wear clothes like these?
  • Close your eyes and imagine that you are there - what sounds would you hear? How would it smell?
  • What is the building in the background? (schoolhouse) Why do you think it has a chimney? Does it have electricity? Computers? (Discuss the concept of a one room schoolhouse from the 1800’s)
  • How do you think they got to school? (There were no cars, so most walked, others were lucky enough to ride horses, or to have a horse drawn buggy.)
  • Where do you see curved lines? (in the legs, the curve of the hill)
  • Where do you see straight lines? (in the arms, the sides of the school, the edge of the field)
  • Which lines show the most movement? (the curved ones)
  • Do you think this scene was from Homer’s imagination, or did he really see this happen?

You can introduce “foreground” and “background” to the older students by specifically discussing the boys playing Snap the Whip in the foreground and the schoolhouse in the background. If you take the boys out of the painting, it would be called a landscape.

Activity: Pipe Cleaner Action Figure

Materials Needed: 6” pipe cleaners – 3 per student, drawing paper, pencilsand erasers. If time permits, the students can color their drawing with crayons or colored pencils.

Process:

  1. Have the students fashion a pipe cleaner person doing one of these movements. Use 3 pipe cleaners to create a simple “skeleton” of a person.Bending the arms and legs will show the movement.*** Remind that curved line helps show movement.
  1. The students will then draw themselves as skeleton figures doing the same movement as the pipe cleaner onto the drawing paper. They will then draw in the setting of their landscape. Their figure is to be placed in the foreground and to create a background around them. (Such as a stage or baseball or football field, basketball court, playground, etc. )
  1. Add color and details with the colored pencils or crayons.
  1. The pipecleaner figure can be stapled onto their rendering, if desired.