'Two Boys and a Girl making Music', 1629
by Jan Molenaer
London, The National Gallery.

For 2005/06, the one-day Continuing Professional Development courses, called 'Take One Picture', run by National Gallery Education, focused on 'Two Boys and a Girl making Music' by Jan Molenaer.

The course looked at ways of using paintings in the classroom as a starting point for delivering many areas of the National Curriculum. This principle aligns closely with the DfES Primary National Strategy: Excellence and Enjoyment, which supports a holistic approach to the curriculum by exploiting the links between subject areas.

'Two Boys and a Girl making Music' was chosen as a featured painting because it is a very popular image with children when they visit the Gallery. They enjoy searching for clues to find out what the three characters might be doing, and what their lives would have been like in the seventeenth century, compared to their own today.

Click here to view work from the 2007 exhibition, inspired by this painting.

© The National Gallery, London

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