This paper aims to explore whether the teaching of the abstract literary concepts of symbolism, narrative perspective and style to young readers can be made more effective by the study of art in an art museum context. The research is an interpretive qualitative case study exploring the learning of 6 participants within a class of 28 students aged 11-12. The results show that the students developed positive learning behaviours in the museum, and that these supported the students’ ability to reflect on the artists’ use of symbolism and style in narrative paintings. It demonstrates how some of these skills could be applied to the reading of texts in the English classroom. The paper hopes to encourage English teachers to question what it is they want students to learn about reading and use a cross-arts approach to adopt a more holistic pedagogy than the English National Curriculum might propose.