Japanese Aesthetic Influences on Early 20th-Century Art Education: Arthur Wesley Dow and Ernest Fenollosa

Incorporating primary archival materials, this essay considers the influence of Arthur Wesley Dow on art education in the United States at the turn of the 20th century. I also highlight the impact of Dow’s teacher and mentor, Ernest Fenollosa. I posit here that their relationship resulted in the introduction and influence of Japanese aesthetics, which in turn shaped Dow’s views about the elements and principles of art and design. My essay chronicles how some of Dows’ aesthetic understandings were shaped and then disseminated into U.S. art education, art history, and training for artists from the late 1800s through the first half of the 1900s.