Denman Ross and American Design Theory

1. Formative Years

18 1 FORMATIVE YEA| s I am certainly more interested in Art than in anything else, and I believe I have something to say about it worth saying. denman ross, 1886 A casual glance at some of the significant dates in Denman Ross’s long and active life tempts us to think of him as a twentieth-century figure. He published his first book, A Theory of Pure Design, in 1907, followed by On Drawing and Painting in 1912 and The Painter’s Palette in 1919; he taught at Harvard from 1899 through the 1920s; and he worked with the young Jack Levine and Hyman Bloom in the late 1920s. Yet Ross was fifty-four years old when he wrote A Theory of Pure Design and in his seventies when he taught Levine and Bloom. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Ross was no young radical but a middle-aged man rather set in his ways. To understand his contributions in the early twentieth century, therefore, we have to consider the formation of his thinking in the nineteenth century. Born in 1853, Ross grew up and received an education in the era generally known as Victorian. As historians have amply demonstrated, this period was characterized by a conservative and staid outlook trying to hold its own against a storm of significant changes. In the United States, the effects of the civil war, the rising popularity of science, great leaps in technology, and the growth of the population through immigration all changed the way Americans understood themselves and the world around them. Ross’s experiences in the nineteenth century allowed him to draw on various sources as he shaped the design theory that he promoted in the twentieth century. His education at Harvard, particularly at the hands of Henry Adams and Charles Eliot Norton, provided him with a methodology and an unswerving conviction that art had an essential place in American society. His reading of James Jackson Jarves and his travels through Europe taught him how to look at a work of art. Formative Years : 19 Ross lived the majority of his life in Boston and became a renowned and established figure in its institutions and organizations, but he spent his earliest years in Cincinnati. His father, John Ludlow Ross, hailed from a socially prominent family that had lived in the Cincinnati area for decades. John’s parents, Ogden Ross and Lydia Ludlow, could each claim some distinction : Ogden had come to Ohio from New Jersey early in the nineteenth century (his father, Matthias, had fought in the American revolution); the Ludlows had lived in New York since 1694, and Lydia’s father (also named John) had settled in Cincinnati in 1790. Ogden Ross and Lydia Ludlow had sixteen children including John, so young Denman never had a shortage of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Of his fifteen siblings, John had a particularly close relationship with his brother Matthias Denman (called Denman and for whom young Denman was named; in this account, I will refer to Matthias Denman as M. Denman to avoid confusion). John and M. Denman cemented their bond further when, in the late 1840s, they married sisters. M. Denman married Mary Waldo of Boston in 1847; at the wedding, John met Mary’s sister, Frances Walker Waldo. They married soon afterward and settled in Cincinnati, where John, an astute businessman, ran a profitable paper factory.∞ The years in Cincinnati established an emotional bond between Ross and his parents that colored their future habits and movements. Ross’s parents had four children, three of whom (two boys and a girl) died in childhood; as the only surviving child, Denman became the sole focus of their attention. This, not surprisingly, resulted in a certain level of overprotectiveness, particularly from his mother. Ross realized this and simply accepted it: I became the leading interest of her life. She had me on her mind morning , noon and night and she was ready at any time to follow me to the ends of the earth. When I was out of sight she was very much worried. If I was in swimming she was sure I was drowning. So it was when I [went] sailing. Her one and only interest was in my survival in health and happiness . . . . For them [both parents] the pleasure of life was not so much in traveling and sight-seeing as in being with me and it was equally my happiness to be with them.≤ The...