St Joseph's Catholic Infant School

Take One Picture 2024 Infant School

Take One Picture is a national programme for primary schools, which aims to inspire a lifelong love of art and learning run by The National Gallery.

Every year,  we take one picture from the collection to inspire cross-curricular work in primary classrooms.

Activity around each focus painting takes place in four stages: 

Stage 1: Planning your project

Stage 2: Working on your project

Stage 3: Submitting your project

Stage 4: Exhibiting your project

This year's picture is The Courtyard of a House in Delft by Pieter de Hooch 1658. We are invited into a quiet space: the serene courtyard of a red-brick
house in the 17th-century Dutch city of Delft. Mild spring breezes rustle
the trees, birds chirp overhead and footsteps can almost be heard on
the brick-covered floor, together with the soft chatter of a little girl
speaking to a maid. Pieter de Hooch has carefully constructed the scene to make us feel as though we are there too. Our view is the same as that of someone standing in the courtyard – we could almost reach out and pick up the abandoned broom. The artist offers us a glimpse into an ordinary day and ordinary lives. However, the scene is an imagined one. Despite
its fiction, this little world offers an insight into Dutch life in the 1600s,
a time of prosperity and change for a small and relatively new nation. 

The parents were welcomed into school on Wednesday 19th June to view our art gallery. Have a look at the pictures of our work below.