ABSTRACT
The foundation for measure and design in American painting existed on many levels. By locating the genesis of the American style in the sensitivity of her artisans for design instead of the great schools of European art, the Bulletin was not being entirely chauvinistic. The practical, intellectual, and aesthetic knowledge that was a recognized necessity for the inventor or designer of manufactured goods demanded improved facilities for the education of working men and women. The separate factors of painting--color, light, proportion, perspective, anatomy, and design--could be investigated in depth for the purpose of establishing controls over the procedure of picture-making. Measure and design colored artists' predisposition toward painting, formed part of their means of learning technique, and governed the arrangement of their images. The philosophy of the Enlightenment provided an environment that nurtured the American artist’s concern with the specific, the concrete, and the factual, organized by means of harmonious principles of design.
