Academy of Design

“ National Academy of Design.—The growing interest felt in relation to the Fine Arts in this country, and the influence which the National Academy of Design has had in producing that interest, make it imperative upon us to notice the pictures which are annually sent to this exhibition. ”

“ At great cost it is arranged to offer every facility for thorough, systematic and complete work in this direction. The school rooms and equipment are unequalled by the Artists' League for the Academy of Design in New York, and are not excelled by the great schools of Paris, up to the present time. ”

“ Let the members of the Academy open their doors wide enough to admit all classes of artisans who desire to study the principles of design—the basis upon which the beauty and the saleability of their works mainly depends. There might then, in addition to the sections of Painting and Sculpture, be added those of Architecture, Ornamental Marble and Stone Workers, Carvers in Wood and Metal, Gold and Silver Smiths, Cabinet Makers, and indeed, as many other occupations as chose to unite themselves, in separate sections, for the purposes of mutual instruction in the Art of Design. ”

“ Throughout his life he was ever producing canvases, and designing, and his interest in the art activity of the country, which connects his name with the establishment of the New York Academy of Design, together with his writing on the subject, make him an important figure in that line of work. ”

“ The Academy of Design is located at the northwest corner of Fourth avenue and Twenty-third street. It is one of the most beautiful edifices in the city. It is built in the pure Gothic style of the thirteenth century, and the external walls are composed of variegated marble. It has an air of lightness and elegance, that at once elicit the admiration of the gazer. The interior is finished with white pine, ash, mahogany, oak, and black walnut in their natural colors; no paint being used in the building. ”

“ But an academy founded upon such principles can never effect even its own narrow purposes. If it has an origin no higher, no taste can ever be formed in it which can be useful even in manufactures; but if the higher arts of design flourish, these inferior ends will be answered of course.
We are happy in having a prince who has conceived the design of such an institution, according to its true dignity, and promotes the arts, as the head of a great, a learned, a polite, and a commercial nation ”

“ To these shall be delegated the power to regulate its entire concerns, choose its members, select its students, etc.
"Thus will the germ be formed to grow up into an institution which we trust will be put on such principles as to encourage—not to depress—the arts. When this is done our body will no longer be the Drawing Association, but the National Academy of the Arts of Design, still including all the present association, but in different capacities. ”

“ He with a few others now founded the National Academy of Design. He took lodgings in the Catskills in the summer of 1826, and worked diligently. He studied nature like a lover; now he sketched a peculiar sunset, now a wild storm, now an exquisite waterfall. "Why do not the younger landscape painters walk—walk alone, and endlessly?" ”

“ She won a medal for a head of Ajax in the first year of her studies, and on the merit of that achievement she was admitted to the art-school of the National Academy of Design in New York. So decided was her progress that, at the end of the first year in that institution her first full-length drawing was one of those selected for exhibition. As it was not her intention to become a figure-painter, she left the Academy and devoted herself to the study of landscape painting. ”

“ Over at the National Academy of Design, in an upper room, the members of one of the women's {6}portrait classes were assembled, ready to begin work. Easels had been drawn into position; a clear light from the blue sky of the last of April fell through the opened roof upon new canvases fastened to the frames. And it poured down bountifully upon intelligent young faces. The scene was a beautiful one, and it was complete except in one particular: the teacher of the class was missing—the teacher and a model. ”

“ Having said so much in depreciation of the Academy, we must also say that it conveys on the whole an elegant, artistic, and even cheerful impression to the mind, relieving, with its beautiful contrasts of white and gray and slate, the sombre blocks of red or brown buildings which surround it, and actually lightening up the rather prosaic quarter in which it stands. Too much praise cannot be accorded to the architect for the combinations of color which he has infused into his design ”

“ It may not be out of place here to remark, that it is firmly believed that the Academy of Design can yet rise up from its ashes, and overthrow all such schemes as Art-Unions, by placing itself upon a more liberal and popular footing; and by disclaiming all exclusive titles as utterly unworthy the ambition of every sensible and right-feeling artist. Institutions in this country, to be useful, must be placed on a popular foundation ”

“ Just as it is necessary for the painter to keep up with the times by going to the annual exhibitions of the Academy of Design, or the Academy of Fine Arts, or by seeing a selection of the pictures shown, so the artisan should keep abreast of the work done not only in this country but abroad in the same field as his own. ”

“ We have said that these Art-Unions prevent artists from taking any steps to provide the means of instruction for those who need and seek it. As an illustration of this we may mention the present state of the National Academy of Design. ”

“ After this, if he is studiously inclined, he may perhaps go to the academy at Somerset House, where in the course of a year, he may hear six lectures on architecture, provided that is, that the professor is neither sick, nor idle, nor too busy to give them; or he will employ himself at home in making designs, without at all knowing what are the requisites for any mode of design whatever. ”

“ He then studied art, exhibiting first at the Academy of design in 1858, since which time he has been a regular contributor. He was made an associate of the academy in 1869, and is a member of the Brooklyn art association and one of the founders of the Brooklyn art club. ”

“ I trust a period will come, when this Academy will be able to send the young artist, not from one spot or one seminary to another, but to gather improvement from every celebrated work of art wherever situated. But the progress and all future success of the artist must depend upon himself. He must be in love with his art or he will never excel in it.
"That the arts of design were among the first suggestions vouchsafed by Heaven to mankind, is not a proposition at which any man needs to start. ”

“ As one of the regenerators of the old or American Academy of Fine Arts, I now make bold in saying to its directors a few things, which if duly weighed and followed must result favorably to its vitality and best interests, and be the medium of establishing the reputation of artists on firm and lasting basis, viz.: by collecting around the American Academy and with it all the genius and talent in the arts of design which our country possesses and creating a fund sufficient to all its wants and expenditures. ”

“ He studied (1842–1845) at Brown University, then went to New York, and entered the art schools of the National Academy of Design, of which organization he was elected an associate in 1851, and an academician in 1854. Subsequently he studied in Paris and Rome. ”

“ With these and other additions and alterations, assuming that the national pictures are removed, I propose that the building should be devoted exclusively to the teaching of Art in all its branches, and the periodical exhibition of modern works, for which purpose it should be divided between the Royal Academy of Fine Art, and the Metropolitan School of Design for practical and decorative Art. ”

“ In 1873 he abandoned reporting and became connected with the school of design, now the art academy, of the University of Cincinnati. His object was to secure the development of American decorative art and to open up a new profession for women. ”

“ If designing could be taught, all the world would learn: as all the world reads—or calculates. But designing is not to be spelled, nor summed. My men continually come to me, in my drawing class in London, thinking I am to teach them what is instantly to enable them to gain their bread. "Please, sir, show us how to design." "Make designers of us." And you, I doubt not, partly expect me to tell you to-night how to make designers of your Bradford youths. Alas! I could as soon tell you how to make or manufacture an ear of wheat, as to make a good artist of any kind. ”

“ Arts and Crafts schools, so that a student may really acquire a practical working knowledge of the peculiar requirements of design to be reproduced in any process of manufacture, instead of being launched on the world with vague general ideas of drawing and painting, but ignorant of how to apply them. ”

“ Thus, then, you will find—and the more profound and accurate your knowledge of the history of art the more assuredly you will find—that the living power in all the real schools, be they great or small, is love of nature. But do not mistake me by supposing that I mean this law to be all that is necessary to form a school. There needs to be much superadded to it, though there never must be anything superseding it. The main thing which needs to be superadded is the gift of design. ”

“ A school of design we must have too in each city. It should be a stately and noble building, full of the best examples of the best art of the world. Furthermore, do not put your designers in a barren whitewashed room and bid them work in that depressing and colourless atmosphere as I have seen many of the American schools of design, but give them beautiful surroundings. Because you want to produce a permanent canon and standard of taste in your workman, he must have always by him and before him specimens of the best decorative art of the world, so that you can say to him: ‘This is good work. ”

“ A Model School of Industrial Art.
We cannot, at this time, speak of its provisions by which drawing, modeling, designing, etc., are taught; but we desire to call particular attention to the facilities that are offered for a practical instruction in weaving and textile design. Special courses are provided for teaching designing for all varieties of textile fabrics, and its practical application to loom work. As a complete course in its theoretical and practical utility we do not hesitate to say it is without an equal in America. ”

“ Here, in morning, afternoon, and evening classes, under the best instructors, a three years' course in art may be taken, in drawing, painting, and clay-modelling; also courses in architectural and mechanical drawing, where in the adjacent shops the properties of materials and their power to bear strain can be learned. Many students take a course in design, and are thus enabled to win good positions as designers of book-covers, tiles, wall-papers, carpets, etc. ”

“ The lay student is not in any degree a painter or a sculptor or a designer, neither is he in training for any of these professions. The advantage of the Design method is, that with no skill whatsoever in drawing, the beginner in the study of art can apply to his own efforts the same principles of design which have from time immemorial entered into the creation of great works of art. The college freshman planning a surface design with the aid of "squared" paper is applying the same principles that guided the hand of Michelangelo as it swept across the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. ”

“ This theoretic kind of training, though still in force, and though it enabled the department to turn out certificated teachers for the schools of the country of a certain standard, and to give to students a general theoretic idea of art, has been found wanting, since, in practice, when the student in design leaves his school and desires to take up practical work as a designer or craftsman, he requires special knowledge, and specialized skill in design for his work to be of use ”

“ In furthering the work of the first group, the topics so familiar to the art teacher of our modern schools are treated—landscape, plants, life, and still life. In the second group are presented the principles of perspective, of industrial drawing, of color harmony, and most important of all, the principles of pure design. In the third group are placed creative exercises in composition, in decorative design, and in many forms of manual training. ”

“ Our School of Design thus becomes a School of Art, a length a College, dominating the instruction of the nation, to the satisfaction not only of its promoters, but of the general public and their representatives, so that annual votes justly increase. ”

“ But the real educating after influences; the inspiring and refining sources of artistic invention in design must be found in the splendid array of examples of ancient art of all kinds in our museums and galleries—which are mines of artistic wealth to the student and the designer.
Yet the most ordinary art-school training cannot be without its effect, even if only negative. The mere practice of cultivating the observation and uniting it with a certain power of depicting form is an education in itself, and gives people fresh eyes for nature and life. ”

“ Such questions ought not to be overlaid with archæological inquiries, or with the information which only profits the designer; though of course it is best that the knowledge of design should be part of the education of the craft. ”