Abstract
Walter S. Goodnough (1852–1919) remembered walking to the Massachusetts Normal Art School (MNAS) in Pemberton Square on opening morning with the director. Goodnough had some previous art training, including classes at Bridgewater State Normal School, and decided to specialize in visual art. As soon as he heard about Smith, Goodnough went to him, attending Smith’s first Summer Art School for Teachers of Drawing. Although Goodnough completed only one credential from the normal art school, Certificate A in 1874, he was recognized at the first ceremony awarding certificates in June 1876.
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Notes
- 1.
Walter S. Goodnough to Mrs. Fannie Clark Merriman, 28 December 1897, Alumni Correspondence [Hanging] Folder. (1874–2010), MASSART; ‘Walter S. Goodnough. President New York State Art Teachers’ Association,’ Art Education: A Journal Devoted to Manu-Mental Training 1, no. 2 (December 1894): 41–42.
- 2.
Hearing 2, 2 March 1882, Massachusetts, General Court, Joint Committee on Education, State Normal Art School Investigation, State Library, Boston. A series of 21 hearings before the Massachusetts legislature’s education committee in March–April 1882 investigated the management of MNAS, especially conflicts between Principal Walter Smith and Chair of the Board of Visitors Rev. Alonzo A. Miner. To shorten notes, I will refer to hearings by number and date.
- 3.
Massachusetts Normal Art School, Circular of the Massachusetts Normal Art School at Boston, Under the Direction of the State Board of Education. First Year, 1873–74 (Boston: Wright & Potter, State Printers, 1873); ‘The Normal Art School,’ Boston Daily Globe, 2 November 1873, 8; ‘Industrial Art Education’ Boston Daily Advertiser, 7 November 1873, 1.
- 4.
Different sources give slightly different numbers. The figures I am using from the handwritten record seem most accurate: Massachusetts Normal Art School, 1873–1923, Record of Students Admitted, Their Examination and Graduation, &c., Massachusetts College of Art and Design Archives, Boston.
- 5.
‘The State Normal Art School,’ Boston Daily Advertiser, 18 November 1873, 2.
- 6.
Ibid. One controversy around public schooling was how much education the state should provide. Generally, those in power determined that education likely to lead to a profitable profession should be paid by private funds. Public monies, on the other hand, could be used to educate public school teachers who would serve the Commonwealth without aspiring to personal wealth. The ideology of true womanhood asserted the selfless service of women—thus, state-funded normal schools typically enrolled women rather than men, who were expected to be more ambitious.
- 7.
Ibid.
- 8.
‘Sex in Education’ Boston Daily Globe, 31 October 1873, 4; Edward H. Clarke, Sex in Education; or, a Fair Chance for the Girls (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1873); ‘Woman Suffrage,’ Boston Daily Globe, 10 November 1873, 1.
- 9.
Sue Zschoche, ‘Dr. Clarke Revisited: True Womanhood, and Female Collegiate Education,’ History of Education Quarterly 29, no. 4 (Winter 1989): 545–69.
- 10.
O. S. Fowler and L. N. Fowler, Phrenology Proved, Illustrated, and Applied; Embracing Analysis of the Primary Mental Powers, in Their Various Degrees of Development, the Phenomena Produced by Their Constant Activity, and the Location of the Phrenological Organs in the Head, Together with a View of the Moral and Theological Bearing of the Science (New York: S. R. Wells & Co., 1877); Stephen Tomlinson, Head Masters: Phrenology, Secular Education, and Nineteenth-Century Social Thought (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2005).
- 11.
‘Charles A. Barry,’ The Phrenological Journal and Science of Health 94–95 (June 1892), 246–52. American sculptors and painters influenced by phrenology expected to have larger bumps for faculties of constructiveness, ideality, and imitation. Phrenologists did not refer to a specific faculty of imagination, though the term was in use as early as the 1830s. Believers would have connected the concept of imagination to the faculty of ideality. The faculty of imitation was believed to appear early in childhood, but was not enough for artistic genius. Ideality exerted a refining influence, helping the artist attain beauty: see Charles Colbert, A Measure of Perfection: Phrenology and the Fine Arts in America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
- 12.
The founding dean of Syracuse University’s College of Fine Arts and his wife, a physician, argued against Clarke’s prescriptions: George Fisk Comfort and Anna Manning Comfort, Women’s Education and Women’s Health: Chiefly in Reply to “Sex in Education” (Syracuse, NY: T. W. Dinston & Co., Publishers, 1874).
- 13.
Julia Ward Howe, ed., Sex and Education: A Reply to Dr. E. H. Clarke’s “Sex in Education” (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1874). Also see: Anne Firor Scott, Making the Invisible Woman Visible (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984); Nancy Woloch, Women and the American Experience (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984); Zschoche, ‘Dr. Clarke Revisited.’
- 14.
In 1877, Massachusetts permitted women to serve on local school committees. By 1879, the Commonwealth allowed women to vote in school committee elections. Arthur C. Boyden, ‘Development of Education in Massachusetts,’ in Annual Report of State Board of Education, (Boston: State Board of Education, 1929), 34–45.
- 15.
Walter Smith, Art Education, Scholastic and Industrial (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1872), 166.
- 16.
Berlin-wool work was a type of embroidery. Patterns could be found in women’s magazines.
- 17.
Smith, Art Education, 172.
- 18.
Circular MNAS, 1873, 3.
- 19.
I. E. Clarke, Art and Industry, 173.
- 20.
33rd Report, 1870, 5.
- 21.
42nd Report, 1879, 7.
- 22.
‘Normal Art School,’ Boston Daily Globe (6 May 1882), 5.
- 23.
‘Public Instruction in Drawing,’ Old and New (1870–1875) 2, no. 5 (November 1870), 631–34.
- 24.
Both quotations: 41st Report, 1878, 42.
- 25.
Russell H. Conwell, History of the Great Fire in Boston November 9 and 10, 1872 (Boston: B. B. Russell, 1872).
- 26.
John D. Lord, Benjamin W. Putnam, and J. Warren Thyng, ‘The Normal Art School,’ Boston Daily Advertiser, 17 February 1874, 1. Putnam would speak at the first commencement in June 1876.
- 27.
Reviewers praised the book for its practical recommendations, although some questioned whether everyone really could be taught to draw, or worried that systematic art education might thwart the emergence of artistic genius: ‘5—Art Education, Scholastic and Industrial,’ The North American Review, January 1873, 189–94; ‘Art,’ Atlantic Monthly, November 1872, 631–35; ‘Art in Our Homes and Schools,’ The Century: A Popular Quarterly, 1873, 511–15; ‘Current Literature. Art Education,’ The Literary World: A Monthly Review of Current Literature, 1 November 1872, 81–82; ‘Literature and Art. Books,’ Christian Union, 20 November 1872, 427–28.
- 28.
37th Report, 1874, 33.
- 29.
39th Report, 1876. This lecturer was the sculptor Dr. William Rimmer. Rimmer’s biographer quotes the letter, but does not indicate whether it was mailed: Truman Howe Bartlett, The Art Life of William Rimmer, Sculptor, Painter, and Physician (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1890), 63.
- 30.
‘The General Court,’ Boston Daily Advertiser, 4 February 1875, 2.
- 31.
William R. Ware Papers, 1815–1917, MIT. Ware graduated from Harvard in 1852, worked as a private tutor in New York City for 2 years, and then returned to Cambridge for 2 years at Harvard’s Lawrence Scientific School, receiving his SB in 1856. When he left MIT, Ware went to New York where he established the architecture program at Columbia University.
- 32.
A. Hun Berry Papers 1869–1875, MIT.
- 33.
Henry Turner Bailey, A Sketch of the History of Public Art Instruction in Massachusetts (Boston: Wright & Potter, 1900). After being listed as professor during the first year, Baker enrolled as accession number 125 on 14 March 1874. At the fourth graduation ceremony in June 1879, he was one of five people who received diplomas for completing all four certificates.
- 34.
George Hartnell Bartlett, Pen and Ink Drawing (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1904).
- 35.
‘Art Education. What Is Being Done in Boston in Practical Art Culture,’ n.d., Clippings Files, MASSART. Newspaper coverage of Smith’s MNAS and Lowell Institute lectures and students in Class A suggests public interest in the new school: ‘The Normal Art School. Lecture by Mr. Walter Smith, Reported for the Boston Journal,’ 14 May 1874, Clippings Files, MASSART.
- 36.
Students Carrie M. Huntington and Cynthia E. Hollis testified about how Smith evaluated student work: Hearing 17, 22 March 1882.
- 37.
Orthographic projection is a means for representing three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface without using linear perspective. Each face of the object is drawn as if parallel to the picture plane, and multiple faces can be included in one drawing. Isometric projection is used in technical and engineering drawing to represent three-dimensional objects on a two-dimensional surface. In isometric or axonometric projection, three faces of the object are shown equally foreshortened, with angles of 120° rather than 90°. Projection of shadows requires computation to determine where the shadow of a three-dimensional object would fall in either orthographic or isometric projection. One-point linear perspective assumes that point of view of a one-eyed person standing still; other projection methods can show various views, as if the object or viewer were moving. These projections are used today in computer graphics, gaming, and animation.
- 38.
By the 1890s, art education textbooks for graded schools published by Prang Educational Company would have simplified and condensed all this into Con, Rep, Dec—constructive, representational, and decorative drawing—the norm for turn-of-the-twentieth-century art education. See: John S. Clark, Mary Dana Hicks, and Walter S. Perry, Teacher’s Manual for the Prang Course in Drawing for Graded Schools (Boston: The Prang Educational Company, 1897).
- 39.
MNAS Circular, 1873.
- 40.
Both Barry and Hitchings wrote drawing books: Charles A. Barry, How to Draw: Six Letters to a Little Girl on the Elementary Principles of Drawing (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1871); Henry Hitchings, Spencerian Drawing Book, #3 (New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., 1872).
- 41.
37th Report, 1874, 38.
- 42.
Stuart Macdonald, The History and Philosophy of Art Education (Cambridge, UK: The Lutterworth Press, 2004).
- 43.
Molly Nesbit, Their Common Sense (London: Black Dog Publishing, 2000). More research is needed to determine whether Smith’s observation of French art education contributed to the strong focus on technical drawing at MNAS.
- 44.
38th Report, 1875.
- 45.
For example, Maria E. Whiton submitted a watercolor of water lilies for Diploma Drawing 22, Certificate A. Her drawing in the MASSART Archives matches the chromolithograph of a water lily in L. Prang & Co., Lithographer, ‘Water-Color Studies, for the Use of Art-Schools and Art Students [Graphic]: Comprising Examples of Water-Color Painting in Use in the Massachusetts State Normal Art-School. After Originals by C. Ryan,’ 1875, George Dubois Family Collection, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA. Louis Prang became Smith’s publisher after James R. Osgood, creating an educational publishing branch for Smith’s American Text-Books of Art Education.
- 46.
Hearing 17, 22 March 1882.
- 47.
During the first decade, several terms overlapped. Students belonged to Classes A, B, C, or D. Each class required a series of diploma drawings and a set of examinations. Once the students successfully completed these requirements, they were awarded the appropriate certificate. After completing all four certificates, a student earned the art master or mistress diploma. The term curriculum was not used; a sequence of classes was described as a course of study or a program of studies.
- 48.
Hearing 5, 8 March 1882.
- 49.
39th Report, 1876.
- 50.
MNAS Circular, 1875–76.
- 51.
The Aesthetic Movement (ca. 1870–1890) was a transatlantic style rooted in South Kensington’s teachings about design and ornament. International exhibitions and South Kensington alumni carried it throughout the British Empire. The style was imperialist as well in its sources for historic ornament, appropriated from Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as well as from Indian, Chinese, Celtic, and other cultural design traditions. Examples of MNAS diploma drawings show how students applied the tenets of the movement in surface designs and furniture. See Roger B. Stein, ‘Artifact as Ideology: The Aesthetic Movement in Its American Cultural Context,’ in In Pursuit of Beauty: Americans and the Aesthetic Movement, edited by Doreen Bolger Burke et al. (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Rizzoli, 1986), 22–51.
- 52.
Massachusetts Normal Art School. ‘Prospectus of the Massachusetts Normal Art School, 33 Pemberton Square, Boston. Under the Management of the State Board of Education’ (Boston: Author, 1874), American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA.
- 53.
‘Massachusetts Art Teacher’s Association,’ Salem Register (22 June 1874), 2.
- 54.
Charles C. Perkins and Boston Massachusetts Art Teachers’ Association, The Antefix Papers: Papers on Art Educational Subjects, Read at the Weekly Meetings of the Massachusetts Art Teachers’ Association, by Members and Others Connected with the Massachusetts Normal Art School (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, Printers, 1875).
- 55.
William R. Ware, ‘Charcoal Drawing. A Lecture Delivered at the Massachusetts Normal Art School, April 13, 1875’ (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, Printers, 1875), American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA.
- 56.
Massachusetts Normal Art School Alumni Association, Historical Sketches of the Massachusetts Normal Art School Alumni Association and of the Massachusetts Normal Art School, April, Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-Eight (Boston: Author, 1898), 24. Deristhe or ‘Rissie’ Hoyt (1842–1940, accession number 54), born in Wentworth, New Hampshire, was brought up in Malden, Massachusetts, and studied at South Kensington, receiving a prize for excellence in drawing. At the Normal Art School, she completed Class A in 1874, Class B in 1875, and Class D in 1877, becoming an instructor who taught Class A and later watercolor, design, and history of painting from 1874 to 1881.
- 57.
The Weather, Boston Daily Advertiser (24 June 1876).
- 58.
Report of Proceedings at the Meeting for the Distribution of Certificates to Students of the Massachusetts Normal Art School, and Address by His Excellency Alexander H. Rice, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, June 23, 1876, in the School 28 School Street, Boston (Boston: Alfred Mudge & Son, Printers, 1877), 5.
- 59.
Rice was a paper distributor whose company owned several paper mills, making him part of the manufacturing class that instigated the Drawing Act. He served on educational boards and political institutions, as a member of the Boston School Committee, two-term mayor of Boston, and member of Congress, before being inaugurated governor in January 1876 for the first of three 1-year terms as Republican governor.
- 60.
Report of Proceedings, 1877, 6. Rice’s references to the constructive faculty and faculty of imagination suggest some familiarity with phrenology.
- 61.
Ibid., 8.
- 62.
Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat, rev. ed. (New York: Picador, 2007).
- 63.
Both quotes: Report of Proceedings, 1877, 9.
- 64.
Ibid., 15.
- 65.
Ibid., 16.
- 66.
Ibid., 17.
- 67.
Ibid., 18.
- 68.
Ibid., 19.
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Stankiewicz, M.A. (2016). Thoroughly Sound and Searching Training. In: Developing Visual Arts Education in the United States. The Arts in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54449-0_4
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