Arthur Wesley Dow: His Beloved Ipswich.

The Museum of the American Arts and Crafts Movement is proud to present an outstanding collection of Arthur Wesley Dow’s eclectic artwork from the Two Red Roses Foundation. This exhibition features over 60 works, including 18 color woodblocks, 6 paintings, and 41 original cyanotypes from the rare Ipswich Days album. Also included in the exhibit are the original album By Salt Marshes, where Dow illustrated his friend Everett Stanley Hubbard’s poems with simple woodcuts, and the three sets of Ipswich Prints, which include 18 prints of Dow’s original designs.

A revered painter, printmaker, photographer, and educator, Dow studied in Paris and taught extensively from the 1880’s through the 1910’s. 

As an art educator, Dow’s ideas on art were centered on the democratic nature of artistic expression, that art should be part of everyday life and not just enjoyed by the few. His 1899 book Composition: A series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers, teaches students to create harmonious works of art through the elements of the composition, such as line, balance, and color. 

Dow’s many students include photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn, painter Georgia O’Keefe, and the Overbeck sisters, whose works in pottery you can see on MAACM’s fourth floor. Dow’s Composition is still taught today using his theories of space and design, and his legacy ripples through artistic expression through the 19th and 20th centuries.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

Image credit:  Arthur Wesley Dow, The Derelict (The Lost Boat), c. 1916. Woodblock print, 5 13/16 x 4 1/16 in. Two Red Roses Foundation collection