Composition

Arthur Wesley Dow gives this book the subtitle "A series of exercises in art structure for the use of students and teachers." This is the ninth edition, revised and enlarged, with new illustrations and color plates, dated 1914. The contents move from line, notan and color through Japanese materials and brush practice to composition in squares, circles and rectangles, landscape, and harmony built from dark and light.

In one passage Dow criticises an academic way of teaching art that ignores fundamental structure, and he describes meeting Ernest F. Fenollosa at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. One exercise has the pupil copy a flower drawn in firm outlines, choose a square or rectangle for it, make several rough trial arrangements, and later trace the best on thin Japanese paper. The effort goes to the arrangement, not to botanical correctness. Another passage describes block printing: an outline drawn in ink, pasted face down on a board and cut with a knife and gouges.