Working Thesis
Eugène Verboeckhoven was one of the last painters to use realism in Barnyard to give animals their own personalities.
Professors comments
Remember that the goal of this paper will be to connect your chosen work of art to a specific artistic style. Verboeckhoven doesn’t fit very well with any particular 19th-century art movement. His paintings of animals are naturalistic (meaning that they look like they could be real), but they’re too idealized and romanticized to fit with the Realist movement of the late 19th century (about which you can read using the course materials in Unit Thirteen).
It would be a stretch, since Verboeckhoven wasn’t formally associated with this movement, but you might be able to argue that this idealized image of farm life is consistent with the Romantic art style of the 19th century (which we’re covering in the current unit, Unit Twelve).
Museum Paper Outline/Source List
For the Museum Paper, you’ll perform a contextual analysis of one work of art that’s currently
on display at the Toledo Museum of Art. Before you write the paper, you’ll turn in an outline
and a list of sources (worth 40 points). Please identify the artist and title of the work of
art you’re analyzing at the top of the outline.
Your outline should include:
• a one-sentence thesis statement that
o identifies your argument about the relationship between the work of art and the
artistic style it represents (worth up to 5 points)
o provides an organizational plan for the body of the essay (worth up to 5 points).
• body paragraph topics that correspond to the organizational plan in the thesis
statement (worth up to 5 points).
• for each proposed paragraph topic, several specific visual details from the work of
art that could be used as support for your argument about its relationship with its
artistic style (worth up to 5 points).
Your list of sources (worth up to 20 points) should include:
• at least five books and/or peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles from the
discipline of art history—preferably a combination of both books and peerreviewed scholarly journal articles. While you may use the following sources if they
are helpful in supporting your argument, they will not count toward the minimum of five
sources:
o websites
o newspapers
o popular magazines (as opposed to peer-reviewed scholarly journals)
o general encyclopedias (like the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia)
o college textbooks (including the book for our course)
o art how-to books
o book reviews
o sources from disciplines other than art history.
• an explanation of how each source will be useful in your essay. For each source,
write a few sentences summarizing the type of information you plan to draw from this
source to support your argument in the Museum Paper.
• proper MLA format for a works cited page. For more information on MLA reference
style, see the Resources section, which includes links to the MLA website and the
MLA guide at the OWL at Purdue website. The Research Guide in Unit Eight also
contains models of MLA format for books (including e-books) and scholarly journal
articles.
In the final draft of the Museum Paper, you may use additional sources besides those
you include in the Museum Paper Outline/Source List. You may also find that sources
from your initial list aren’t as helpful as you anticipated. For this assignment, just
identify the five best books and/or peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles that you
have at this point, even though your research will likely progress as you work on the
paper itself.
As you prepare your outline, consult materials that support this assignment:
• the notes on writing about art in Unit Two of Course Content.
• the sample Museum Paper Outline/Source List in Resources.
• the instructions for the Museum Paper in Assignments, as well as the sample Museum
Paper in Resources.
See the chart below for specific grading standards for the outline and source list.
Due after outline
Museum Paper
For the Museum Paper, you’ll write a 8 page essay in which you perform a contextual
analysis of one work of art that’s currently on display at the Toledo Museum of Art. Before
working on your essay, be sure that you’ve read my comments on your returned
outline.
Your assignment is to analyze the artwork you choose, through developing a clear thesis
statement about its relationship with its artistic style—how it reflects the visual features
and ideas of the style it represents. For examples of how to interpret works of art in terms of
context, see the notes on writing about art in Unit Two. Creating an argument about how the
work of art relates to its artistic style will require knowledge about the culture and arts of that
time, so start by reading the relevant section in your textbook.
In addition to establishing your argument about the artistic style of the work of art, your thesis
statement should contain an organizational plan for body paragraph topics. List the types
of evidence you’ll use to support your argument, so that you have a framework for paragraph
topics as you write the body of the essay.
Once you have developed your thesis, create body paragraphs with topics that
correspond to the organizational plan in your thesis statement. Each body paragraph
should contain a clear topic sentence, several specific visual examples from the work of art
you are analyzing, and an explanation of how these examples support your argument about
the relationship between the work of art and its artistic style. Your goal in each body
paragraph is to illustrate how particular visual details function—breaking down the work of art
to show how it supports the argument you’ve identified in your thesis statement.
In addition to visual evidence from your work of art (which should be part of every body
paragraph), you will need to provide parenthetical references to at least five books and/or
peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles from the discipline of art history—preferably a
combination of both books and peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. While you may
use the following sources if they are helpful in supporting your argument, they will not count
toward the minimum of five sources:
o websites
o newspapers
o popular magazines (as opposed to peer-reviewed scholarly journals)
o general encyclopedias (like the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia)
o college textbooks (including the book for our course)
o art how-to books
o book reviews
o sources from disciplines other than art history.
See the Research Guide in Unit Eight for more information about how to locate the required
sources.
The final paragraph in your essay should be a conclusion in which you restate your thesis
and discuss its potential significance. Consider the larger implications of your argument
about the work of art. How are the artistic style and ideas you’ve discussed important for
providing insight into the historical circumstances of the period?
Credit your sources appropriately—the required sources listed above as well as any optional
sources you choose to use—using proper MLA reference style. Enclose any words taken
from another author in quotation marks, and follow quotations with a parenthetical reference
at the end of the sentence. If you use a specific idea from another author, put a reference at
the end of that sentence. List all sources that you cite in your essay (and no others) on the
works cited page. See the Resources section for writing support materials, including:
• a sample research paper formatted according to MLA guidelines.
• a link to the MLA website.
• a link to the MLA guide at the OWL at Purdue website.
• a summary guide to writing essays in the humanities.
Grading Criteria for Museum Paper
– An A (excellent) paper must contain a minimum of the following:
1. a clearly stated thesis in a fully developed introductory paragraph
2. a thesis that both presents an argument about how the work of art reflects its artistic
style and indicates how the paper will be organized
3. multiple visual examples from the work of art in each body paragraph
4. a well-defined topic for each body paragraph that relates to the organizational plan in
the thesis statement
5. an explicitly stated relationship between each body paragraph and the argument
presented in the thesis statement regarding the work’s artistic style
6. a logical order for body paragraphs that builds the paper’s argument
7. a concluding paragraph that restates the thesis and comments on its significance
8. excellent spelling, punctuation, and grammar, with very few errors
9. appropriate and persuasive tone throughout the paper
10. proper format, with very few errors
11. proper reference style, with very few errors
12. content that fulfills all of the requirements of the assignment, including references
to at least five art history books and/or scholarly journal articles
– A B (good) paper must contain a minimum of the following:
• a clearly stated thesis in the introduction
• multiple visual examples from the work of art in most body paragraphs
• well-defined topics for most body paragraphs
• a majority of body paragraphs that relate to the thesis
• a concluding paragraph
• good spelling, punctuation, and grammar, with no more than a few errors
• appropriate and persuasive tone in the majority of the paper
• no more than a few errors in format
• no more than a few errors in reference style
• content that fulfills all of the requirements of the assignment, including references
to at least five art history books and/or scholarly journal articles
– A C (average) paper must contain a minimum of the following:
• a thesis in the introduction
• visual examples from the work of art in some body paragraphs
• well-defined topics for some body paragraphs
• some body paragraphs that relate to the thesis
• a concluding paragraph
• acceptable spelling, punctuation, and grammar
• appropriate and persuasive tone in the majority of the paper
• no more than some errors in format
• no more than some errors in reference style
• content that fulfills most of the requirements of the assignment, including research
Before Your Instructor Even Begins to Read Your Research Paper:
A Guide to Better Grades for You and Less Aggravation for Me
STEP ONE: EVALUATING YOUR SOURCES
• If your works cited page doesn’t meet the minimum requirements for number and types of
sources, you will not receive any higher than a C on the assignment. You must cite at
least five books and/or peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. Websites, newspapers,
popular magazines, general encyclopedias, college textbooks (including the book for our
course), art how-to books, and sources from disciplines other than art history don’t count
toward the research requirement.
• You can impress me by having more sources than the minimum and by using a variety of
scholarly sources. The ideal works cited page contains a combination of books, scholarly
journal articles, and reliable web sources. Your works cited page should make it clear
that you have read widely in scholarly sources related to your subject and used these
sources in important ways in your essay.
• Any source that’s listed on your works cited page but not cited with a parenthetical
reference in the body of your essay does not count in any way toward the research
requirement.
STEP TWO: HOPING THAT YOU FOLLOWED MLA FORMAT
• Don’t just make up MLA format on your works cited page. Follow the models. See the
Resources section of this course for instructions and examples. Use the exact form of the
models, from punctuation to italics to spacing. (For example, indent the second and
succeeding lines of each works cited page entry.)
• Alphabetize your sources by last name of author (or by title if there’s no author).
• Using a citation generator doesn’t work if you don’t proofread the results to ensure that
they are in proper MLA format and accurately represent your sources.
• This is what an MLA reference looks like (Smith 45). There are no commas, words, or
other extras in a standard MLA reference.
• If your source doesn’t have an author, you’ll have to give a title in your reference, but treat
it as a title, using italics or quotation marks as appropriate. That would look like this
(Gothic Architecture 83) or this (“Impressionism” 61), depending on the type of source.
• Your entire paper, including your works cited page, should be double-spaced. There
should be no single-spacing, nor should there be extra spaces between paragraphs. (In
Word, change your options under Paragraph so that you don’t have extra spaces between
paragraphs.)
STEP THREE: CHECKING YOUR EVIDENCE
• This assignment requires that you include examples from your work of art in each body
paragraph. Give several visual details from your work of art in each body paragraph,
relating them to your larger argument about the relationship between the work of art and
its artistic style. None of your paragraphs should stray from direct analysis of your artistic
work.
• Having visual examples in each body paragraph means having more than one detail from
your artistic work in each body paragraph. Observe and analyze closely.
