Courtauld Gallery

On a cold morning in March, GCSE Art students travelled to the Courtauld Gallery in London. We took part in a workshop which helped us to look more carefully at artworks by thinking about what the subject could see, hear, touch, taste and smell. Another focus was the gaze, which we interpreted in different ways: what was the subject focusing on and where is our focus drawn?

We sketched parts of paintings that were relevant to these prompts or things that we thought represented aspects of the painting, such as a fuzzy line to represent the murmur of noise in the crowded room of A Bar At The Folies-Bergère by Édouard Manet. We spent the afternoon at an exhibition of work by Peter Doig, an artist who often uses bright colours. While the scenes seemed normal at first glance, they all had a surrealist element to them. It was helpful to have our teachers there to give background information and help us to make inferences.

The workshop really helped us to digest some of the busier paintings, especially those of the Medieval and Renaissance eras when there was often a lot going on. By thinking about gaze and how our focus travelled, we were able to take a lot more from the paintings.

Tessa Stanier I Fourth Year