A Developmental History of Art Education. A Developmental History of Art Education Over the centuries, new beliefs about art have arisen and been circulated in many ways. In the United States from the 1840s to now, people have relied heavily on books on art education. Books that survive from different eras show their authors' ideals and explain the virtues of drawing according to their particular advice.
Text describes the procedures.
Illustrations show them. Writers on art education had substantial influence over whatever families drew at the kitchen table or children drew at their desks in classrooms all over the country. John Gadsby Chapman, who first published The American Drawing-Book n 1847, Walter Smith who published his textbook series largely in the 1870s, Arthur Wesley Dow whose Composition had its greatest impact in the first decades of this century, and Viktor Lowenfeld whose several volumes appeared years later, each had their time to command the American imagination. Coloring books were taboo. I was encouraged to make my own mark . . . .