ARTHUR WESLEY DOW Rolling fields Ipswich, Ma Cyanotype Print ca. 1895-1910 6.25x8.25" on paper that is 6.5 x 8.5" ASG# AWD/1049 shows many of Dow's compositional themes as the lines of the curving fields curve up and back leading the eye to the house and the bare trees.

Provenance: George Rinhart to Van Deren Coke to Andrew Smith Gallery 1996.

Arthur Wesley Dow (b Ipswich, Ma. 1857-1922) took up photography in 1880, shortly after the invention of the hand-held camera and easily reloadable film. He immediately recognized its possibilities as a medium of artistic expression and for the next thirty years photographed his native Ipswich, Massachusetts, New York's City Island and Brooklyn environs, as well as in the foreign countries he visited.

Dow's approach to photography differed from the soft-focused Pictorial tradition that was then in vogue. Instead, he made sharp photographs of landscapes and botanical forms that recorded the angles, tonal patterns, and planes created by trees, fields, marshes, ponds, houses, and boats.

Dow stressed the beauty of asymmetrical compositions to his students, and included detailed examples in his book Composition. Dow's composition differs dramatically from traditional designs that focus around a central form. It recalls Matisse's observation that all parts of the picture should have equal interest. In his search for a new definition of art he zealously studied the imagery of non-Western cultures, reading and reflecting on Oceanic, Egyptian, African, and Aztec art. His discovery of Japanese woodblock prints changed his life. The decorative, elegant compositions by Hokusai and other u-kiyoe artists convinced him that nature should serve as a reference point but not an end in itself, and that artists need not merely imitate the visible world. In 1899 he published a textbook for art classes called Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers. This became the bible for art students and teachers, and provided the standard by which art was taught, at all levels, from grade school to college. Reissued over the next five decades, it changed the way art was taught in America.

Dow's students included masters of photography Gertrude Kasebier, Clarence White, and Alvin Langdon Coburn. He not only taught them the tenets of Modernism he had developed, but supported their careers by finding them shows and teaching positions. Margaret Bourke-White, Dorothea Lange, Laura Gilpin, Ralph Steiner, and Paul Outerbridge were second-generation Dow disciples.

Very Good minor vertical waviness top bottom edges very rich tones minor wear