Walter Smith (art educator)

Walter Smith (1836–1886) was a British art educator and author of drawing books and books on industrial art education, known as leading early proponent of industrial design in the United States.[1]

Biography

Smith was born in Britain in 1836, and graduated at the South Kensington School of Art in London. After graduation, Smith settled in Leeds, where he became headmaster of the Leeds, Holbeck and Keighley School of Art. He also became headmaster of the drawing department of the Leeds Grammar School; Principal Art Master in Huddersfield College in Huddersfield, and superintendent of drawing in schools for the poor in the district of Leeds, Huddersfield, Keighley etc.[2]

The early 1860s commissioned by the British Lords of the Committee of Council on Education Smith made a comparison of the French and English systems of art education to suggest improvement and modification of the latter. This resulted in the 1864 publication of Report on the works of pupils, in the French schools of design, recently exhibited in the Palais de l'Industrie, Champs-Elysées, Paris.

At the age of thirty-five, in 1871, he emigrated to the United States. In Boston, he became appointed Professor of Art Education in the City of Massachusetts Normal School of Art, and Massachusetts State director of Art Education.[3] The City of Boston later also appointed him director of drawing for the city, where he had the responsibility to provide art instruction and supervision to classroom teachers in the city of Boston.[4] In his years in the States, he wrote a series of books on art education, and instructional works for teachers, and a drawing book for students of public schools and art schools. He also wrote a work on the Decorative arts, shown at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 in Philadelphia, Pa.. The late 1870s he gave a series of lectures to the Massachusetts Teachers Association and other National Associations on Art and technical education, which were later published. In 1882 he returned to England,[5] where he died in four years later.

Work
Title page American text books of art education, 2nd ed. 1875

Smith was known by the larger audience for his "American textbooks of art education," published the early 1870s, which considerably influenced American art education.[6] For the Massachusetts public schools he had developed an elementary curriculum of drawing, which would "set the standard for art education throughout the Northeast."[1]

Another of Smith's accomplishments was a drawing technique, "based on a drawing technique developed by the English designer Christopher Dresser, his method emphasized regular ornament consisting of simple geometrical forms arranged symmetrically."[1]

Art education

Smith wrote one of the first American textbooks of art education, published in 1873. In the preface he declared, that the intention of the work was to cover the whole field of art education:

The plan of the books is the first systematic effort made in this country to cover the whole field of Art Education for schools, by embracing every subject included under the head of Elementary Drawing. Pupils going through the course in all the subjects will be thoroughly grounded and prepared either for practical industrial art or the further professional study of the fine arts.[7]

Industrial design

Smith was an early proponent of industrial design. In his 1880 American Text-books of Art Education: Drawing-books 1 and 2, he predicted their importance, stating:

The subject of industrial design is one of three important practical co-related subjects which should be taught in public schools, and to which practice and skill in drawing should be applied. Satisfactory results in this subject, however, depend entirely upon the manner in which it is taught. Instruction in industrial design means a clear presentation of the principles which obtain in the construction and harmonious arrangement of geometric form for decorative purposes, the proper use of plant forms in ornamental arrangements, and the principles of good taste to be found in the great history styles of art.[8]

Selected publications
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References
  1. Amelia Peck, Carol Irish. Candace Wheeler: The Art and Enterprise of American Design, 1875–1900. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 January 2001. p. 100-101
  2. Smith (1864, title page).
  3. Smith (1872, title page).
  4. Diana Korzenik (1985, p. 155).
  5. Diana Korzenik. Drawn to Art: A Nineteenth-Century American Dream, University Press of New England, 1985. p. 240
  6. Maurice Rickards, Michael Twyman (2000) The Encyclopedia of Ephemera: : A Guide to the Fragmentary Documents of Everyday Life for the Collector, Curator, and Historian. p. 127
  7. Smith (1873, Preface)
  8. Smith (1880, p. 70)
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