History: Museum Explorers in The Wallace Collection

Yesterday, Year 1 visited the Wallace Collection!

We are so lucky that such an amazing Gallery is only a few minutes walk away. To support our topic of explorers, we visited the Wallace Collection to be explorers ourselves, and took part in the ‘museum explorers’ workshop.

We went round the art museum as a whole class, seeing so many beautiful paintings and objects that had been there for hundreds of years. We learnt lots about the people in the paintings, and the artists too. As Year 1 were explorers throughout our trip, they were all given a special explorer pack, where they were to draw and sketch any special paintings or objects they found! This was a lovely way for the class to focus on art within the gallery and really take in the detail and grandeur of the museum.

We explored three areas of the collection. In the first room, we looked at an intriguing portrait of Queen Victoria. The painting showed Queen Victoria before her Coronation when she was still a princess. She wore a beautiful dress and had a dazzling tiara on her head, in the background was the large crown that would be placed on her head, when she became queen. We learnt that the picture shows the very same crown that King Charles III wore during his Coronation last year. In the same room we looked at three very ornate pots, that were decorated in royal blue and gold. We learnt that these were ice coolers, used before fridges were invented to keep cream and wine cool in the summer! We also learnt about the gentlemen who owned lots of the collection, his name was Sir Richard Wallace. He donated his collection of art and artefacts so that it could become and art museum for everyone to see.

Next  we went through lots of rooms filled with swords, shields and suits of armour!  We explored the 15th- and 16th-century armour and talked about the materials used to make it. Year 1 got to touch the armour and try some on. It was very heavy! This was a great experience for Year 1 to feel like brave knights, and how much they had to wear to protect themselves on the battle field.

Lastly we went into the main gallery, a beautiful and vast room filled with many paintings. We looked at The Rainbow Landscape, a painting by Peter Paul Rubens, created in 1636. The children were encouraged to focus on the colours and animals in the painting, and see if they could sketch them. The we moved to two paintings, titled Two Views of Venice, created by Canaletto in . 1735-44. We looked at all of the colours, boats and people in the pictures.

Year 1 had a great afternoon visiting the Wallace Collection, and being museum explorers!