The Prang Textbooks of Art Education and the Emergence of a Transcendentalist Voice in Art Education Curricula

Abstract

This thesis examines how Bonnie E. Snow infused her Transcendentalist-influenced teaching philosophies into the pages of the Text Books of Art Education. These books, referred to as the Prang Art Textbooks, were published by the Prang Educational Company at the turn of the 19th century. The Prang Art Textbooks reflected a modern art education system that was very different from the industrially focused drawing manuals that preceded them.

The Transcendentalists of the 1840s were reacting against notions of rationalism and the grip of the Industrial Revolution. The expression of the Transcendentalist philosophy in the Prang Art Textbooks was influenced by two colliding events at the end of the 1890s: the first was public consensus that education reform could ameliorate the perceived decline in morals believed to be the result of the Industrial Revolution; the second was a public outcry for more robust art curricula in public schools.

Snow created the Prang Art Textbooks to address these two prevailing issues. She introduced a systematic art curriculum to teach art principles infused with a Transcendentalist tone. With the publication of the Prang Art Textbooks, the pendulum in art education began swinging from the utilitarian, industrially focused instruction of commercial drawing books to a nature-focused, emotionally influenced method of teaching that embraced a form of artistic instruction that went beyond mere drawing lessons.