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Reading about California print maker Frances Gerhart (1869–1959) I came across Arthur W. Dow (1857–1922) and his 1899 book Composition (subtitled A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers). Dow was a print maker, painter, and photographer. He was also a force in the American Arts and Crafts movement, and helped spread the awareness of ukiyo-e — Japanese woodblock prints. According to Victoria Dailey (in Behold the Day: The Color Block Prints of Frances Gearhart) there was little interest in woodcuts in the USA at the end of the 19th Century, but by way of his enthusiasm for the ukiyo-e, his book Composition, and his own body of work, Arthur W. Dow kindled the appreciation of the art form.

But more than anything, it seems, he is remembered as an art educator. “Soon after the time of Leonardo da Vinci art education was classified into Representative (imitative), and Decorative, with separate schools for each,” Dow wrote in the foreword to the 1912 edition of Composition. This, he claimed, was “a serious mistake which has resulted in loss of public appreciation.” Dow aimed to rejoin the Representative and the Decorative schools in art education, so that the student can reach an “appreciation of all forms of art and of the beauty of nature.”

“As in pre-Renaissance times in Europe,“ Dow wrote, “the education of the Japanese artist was founded on composition.” Dow’s key philosophy was to concentrate on this composition of line, mass and color. Japanese tools, art practices, and concepts were an important part of the lessons taught in the book.

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The 1916 edition of Composition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday)

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