The Albert A. Anderson, Jr. and Evelynn M. Ellis Art Education Collection consists of nearly one thousand rare American art instruction books, together with related printed materials on art, published between 1794 and the mid-twentieth century. The collection includes drawing manuals, drawing cards, lithographs, copybooks, and other printed ephemera, as well as a small number of Canadian, European, and Asian publications. Many of these materials were aimed at schools and the general public at a time when drawing was viewed as a general skill, like writing or arithmetic, which could be applied to many aspects of life. Indeed, one author has called these volumes "primers for a democratic art."
The collection is one of the most significant of its kind, equivalent in size and scope to major institutional holdings. Art historian and bibliographer Janice G. Schimmelman has observed that the collection "rivals (and probably surpasses) comparable collections at the American Antiquarian Society, the Winterthur Museum, and the Library company of Philadelphia." Schimmelman references many of the titles in the collection in her definitive bibliography, American Imprints on Art through 1865, published by G. K. Hall in 1990.
Anderson began collecting art instruction materials while still an undergraduate art education student in 1960, when he acquired his first volume, an early edition of Viktor Lowenfeld’s Creative and Mental Growth in the original Barnes and Noble book store in downtown New York City. Over the succeeding years he was given additional publications by friends and colleagues and found other materials in antique shops, flea markets, used book stores and ultimately the Internet. For many years he collected these volumes primarily for personal pleasure and in the interest of developing a respectable professional working library, never giving much thought to the notion that they might have interest for others.
Anderson and Ellis donated their collection to the Penn State Libraries Special Collections Library in 2000. The Libraries arranged for the exhibition of a portion of the materials, along with several items from its other rare books holdings, at New York City’s Grolier Club in May of 2006. The exhibition, titled "Teaching America to Draw: Instructional Manuals and Ephemera, 1794 to 1925," co-curated by Anderson, William Joyce, and Sandra Stelts, was well received by the New York press, including an extensive review in the New York Times by its chief art critic, Michael Kimmelman, on 19 July 2006.
Kimmelman noted that the books were "evocative of a golden era when drawing, like reading, was a civilized pastime." He went on to observe that many of the books are discomfiting today because "they presume a degree of skill among ordinary citizens—even children—that would now be regarded as noteworthy in the art world." Indeed, many of the materials are richly and skillfully illustrated with charming, sometimes stunning, and occasionally eccentric illustrations of the human figure, animals, landscape, buildings, and objects, which child or adult learners were expected to copy to the best of their ability. The images themselves constitute an extraordinary visual window into nineteenth-century American culture.
William Hermes. United States drawing-school.
Philadelphia: Janentzky & Co., [ca. 1862], No. 24. |
These highly visual and often beautifully illustrated drawing books have remained little known to contemporary scholars and educators for several reasons. Since the books were instructional in nature, they were used heavily, often to the point of disintegration, or as Kimmelman observed, "worn down like church relics, which supplicants rubbed smooth from caressing." As a result, relatively few are left today, and they are scarce and highly collectible. Those that survive are hidden away, for the most part, in archives, libraries, and private collections, and as a consequence are seldom seen and rarely read even by art professionals. The few books that have addressed the subject contain neither extensive numbers of illustrations nor detailed descriptions of their nature and origins.
Wilhelm Hermes. United States systematic drawing schools.
Berlin: Wilhelm Herms; Milwaukee: J. B. Hoeger & Sons,
[ca. 1860], No. 214 |
The Albert A. Anderson, Jr. and Evelynn M. Ellis Art Education Collection is open to all, and we welcome inquiries. Researchers will find the holdings of the collection by clicking on The CAT (the Penn State Libraries online catalog) and choosing "Advanced Search." Under the heading "In Library," scroll down to the bottom and click on "Special Collections." Type "Anderson Ellis Collection" under the heading "Keywords Anywhere," and hit the search button to bring up a list of titles.
An illustrated catalog of the exhibition "Teaching America to Draw: Instructional Manuals and Ephemera, 1794–1925" is available for free upon request.
W. Schaus. Schaus' drawing studies, for schools and academies: containing elementary and progressive studies of heads, figures, animals, landscapes and flowers.
New York : W. Schaus, Printseller and Artists' Colorman, 1856. |
