A late 19th Century black and white print of students merrily misbehaving in a classroom, likely in a girls’ secondary school. The students are engaged in all sorts of hijinks until two burst through the door announcing that “the teacher is coming.”
The artist is Emanuel Spitzer (1844–1919), a popular German genre painter. His portraits and domestic scenes continue to be sold in auctions today. This print was published circa 1880 by Gebbie & Husson Co. Ltd. of London.
A 19th Century print of a wood frame two-story schoolhouse with an ornate, pitched roof. Interestingly, there are two separate front doors. The building is in a rural setting and is enclosed by a picket fence. A tree in the front yard has colored leaves.
There is a handwritten illegible inscription below the image which says “BH School by E [Elissa or Eleanor]. Young.” The artist may have been a student. The print is dated February 28,1876.
This 19th century oil painting depicts a schoolmaster seated at a desk. His students are seated or standing about the classroom. One boy is being disciplined and is made to wear a dunce cap. A dunce cap is a pointed hat, formerly used as an article of discipline in schools in Europe and the United States. It was typically made of paper and given to unruly schoolchildren to wear. Frequently, the student was made to stand in the corner. The reasoning was that no one would want to be labelled the "dunce" in the class, so students would avoid misbehaving. The work is mounted in an elaborate, gilded wooden frame.
This 1881 print depicts a teacher and students on benches. The girls are in two rows facing the teacher and the boys are in two rows facing the viewer. Other girls are standing. It was common to separate male and female students during this period in both American and European schools.
The original painting was by{Marc Louis} Benjamin Vautier (1829-1898), a Swiss genre painter and illustrator. He devoted himself to depicting peasant life in Switzerland and Germany. Vautier was also a professor at the Academy of Art in Dusseldorf.
This page contains six black and white photographs of school children engaged in a variety of outdoor games, including Fox and Chickens, Three Deep, and Double Tag. The introductory paragraph declares that all modern teachers should emphasize “the importance of play in their educational schemes.” Below each photograph is a detailed description of how each game should be played.
The author of this article published about 1911 is Emmet D. Angeli, Instructor of Games and Play, Harvard Summer School. The photographer is George H. Hudson.
This color drawing of a stone, twenty-room schoolhouse was submitted to an architectural competition held in Boston, MA in the late 19th century. The design envisions a top story with central Romanesque arches and trefoil windows. There is also an inset of the first floor plan.
The architect’s name is G. Wood Taylor (1868-1921), a prominent architect who was based in Springfield, MA. He designed a number of private residences in the upscale Forest Park neighborhood of Springfield, some of which were in the Colonial Revival style. This schoolhouse plan appeared in the American Architect and Building News of April 9, 1898.
This is an oil painting on board depicting a country school classroom by Tennessee artist Fairy Essie Locke Newman in 1960. A teacher is writing an arithmetic problem on the blackboard. Students are seated in three rows, with girls on the left and boys on the right. There is a black potbellied stove in the middle of the room, with a white dog lying beside it. The painting is in a dark wooden frame.
Fairy Essie Locke Newman was the daughter of Hanna Narcissus Magness and Jessee Burton Locke in Warren County Tennessee. She was born July 16, 1880 (or possibly 1872) married in 1900 to Charles Preston Newman, had nine children, and died January 23, 1968 in Nashville.
Barteau’s New and Improved Sunday-School Secretary’s Record is an 1877 record book with entries for students’ names and class numbers. It was designed for teachers to take attendance and keep track of assignments and grades. This ledger has entries up to page 68 and then is blank until page 152; entries continue on page 197. The cover is a mottled black and white pattern.
H.D. Barteau was an active member of the North Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Nelson & Phillips, based in New York City, was a publisher of books on church history, Christianity, and missionary journeys, as well as hymnals and record books. These materials were widely used in Sunday Schools during the latter part of the 19th Century.
