The Scottish
National Portrait Gallery
By Hamish Lewis and Michael Gallacher from 4A
On Thursday 13th March P4A went on their exciting trip to the Scottish
National Portrait Gallery. To get there we had to get a bus which was very fun. We really
enjoyed sitting at the front on the way back where we could pretend to drive!
Dr Budd from The University of Edinburgh met us at the museum. He had come in to school to speak to us the day before as he knows ALL about the history of art. When we got there Dr Budd
showed us a statue of Robert Burns which he told us is made from Italian marble.
He said if you rub his foot it would be good luck so we all got to go and
rub his feet! He also told us to look up at the ceiling as it is full of paintings of famous Scots. He said we should look at them all and pick our favourite Scottish person from history.
After Dr Budd showed
us the statue we went to unpack our bags in the lunch room and headed upstairs
to look at some portraits in the gallery. The first painting that we looked at
showed a family of a mum, dad and five children. We were really surprised when
we found out two of the children that we thought were girls were actually boys
wearing dresses! The boys back then didn’t get to wear trousers until the age
of 10. We were also shocked to find out that one of the children in the
painting had actually died and that they had painted her because they wanted to
remember her. She was holding flowers which are a symbol for death because you have to cut the flowers and kill them to draw them. We also learned that men in the olden days all wore wigs because there was no running water in the houses for them to wash their hair. That is why all of the men in the portraits have long hair!
After lunch we went
into the library where Dr Budd told us a creepy story about heads and bodies
and two men called Burke and Hare who chopped people up and sold them to make
money! We liked this part!
It was then time for
our scavenger hunt. We split into different teams and had to look at all the
portraits to try and solve different problems. There were lots of clues in the paintings but you had to look at them very closely! We LOVED doing this!
If we could describe
the trip in 3 words it would be: exciting,
adventurous and very interesting. We would like to say a big thank you to Dr Budd for teaching us all about the portraits and for a very fun day out!
Here is the statue of Robert Burns. This is when we all got to stroke his foot for good luck!
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| Can you recognise any famous Scots in this painting. It is a timeline which goes all the way around the room. |
This is the painting of the family with the 5 children. Can you pick out which kids are boys and which kids are girls?
Mary, the little girl on the left sadly died before the painting had been finished. That is why she is holding a bunch of flowers.
This is us on our way home after a fantastic day in the museum!
