Audio description:
School is Out by Elizabeth Adela Forbes
Penlee House Gallery & Museum

This is a large oil painting on canvas by Elizabeth Adela Forbes called School is Out.  It dates from 1889 and is approximately 1 metre tall by 1 ? metres wide or 3 ? foot tall by 5 foot wide.  The painting shows the inside of a Victorian schoolroom, believed to be the school in Paul, a village on the outskirts of Penzance.  It is a busy scene, filled with figures. 

Boys and girls of various ages are scattered across the room; many are collecting their belongings and preparing to leave school for the day.  They are watched by a female teacher sitting at a table on the left hand side of the painting.  On the right hand side, children are being helped out of a door, leading to the outside, by another young woman.  The girls are wearing plain, smock-type, coloured dresses, some with white aprons over the top, and dark socks or stockings with boots.  The boys wear dark jackets and knee breeches with socks and boots.  There is muted, natural light in the schoolroom, coming through a window with the blind partially down on the back wall, and from the open door, where a sunny outside space is visible.  The colours the artist has used are soft shades of greys, browns, mauves and pinks, creating a light and airy atmosphere.

In the centre of the room is a group of six girls.  One is tying the strings of a flounced white bonnet for a younger girl.  Three others stand smiling behind a dark-haired girl who is kneeling on the floor, picking up books and putting them into a bag.  They are looking towards a young redheaded boy who sits alone on a simple wooden bench in the left foreground of the painting.  He is holding his hands up to his eyes, suggesting he is crying.  He is believed to be a local boy called Richard Vivian Spargo.  Near his feet are fragments of a small shattered object or ornament, or screwed up paper, which could be the cause of his tears.

Behind the boy, in the left midground of the scene, the female schoolteacher sits at a small rectangular wooden table watching the children in the centre of the room.  She is wearing a plain, black dress and her dark hair is pinned back in a low bun.  Behind her is a blackboard mounted on a wooden easel.  On the table in front of her is a small vase of red and orange flowers and an inkpot with pens and papers.  

Beside the teacher, a small child reaches for belongings at a long desk set against the back wall.  Above this desk is an oil lamp, mounted on the wall, a large paper map and a wall clock.  To the right, on the adjoining wall, are two rows of coat pegs, where a girl reaches for a hat.

On the far right of the painting is the open door, where the second young woman stands helping a group of small children, two boys and two girls, get ready for leaving.  The children wear tam-o-shanter hats and caps.  Three of them have their backs to the viewer but one boy turns to face his friend, with a grin on his face.  

In the centre foreground of the painting, there is a bright, latticed square of sunlight on the floor, which doesnŐt match the outline of the window frame on the back wall; this is thought to be coming from another, unseen window off the side of the canvas.

The overall feeling within the painting is that of a bustling, everyday moment at the end of a Victorian schoolday.

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