"The Eye Is a Nobler Organ": Ruskin and American Art Education

Abstract

Although utilitarian justifications for an industrial art education were effective in introducing art into the common school curriculum in 1870, another sort of rationale for art education was present in contemporary writings. This romantic idealist view of art education was a precursor of the conception of art education that expressed itself in schoolroom decoration and picture study at the turn of the century. Although derived from the aesthetic theory of John Ruskin, the English critic, the set of beliefs about art and art education held by men like Charles Eliot Norton, James Jackson Jarves, James Mason Hoppin, and George Fisk Comfort was consistent with the American experience of art. These beliefs emphasized the value of art for the education of morals; close ties between art, nature, and spiritual experience; the importance of art as a cultural study; and the role of imagination and genius in art. Ruskin's writings both reflected and helped to create a climate of opinion in which art education came to be considered a kind of moral education.