Educational and Industrial Drawing: Primary Freehand Series, No. 4 (with student work)

Oblong softcover, 7.5 x 8.75 inches, 16pp. Good with soil and wear commensurate with age and use. Prescriptive exercises completed up to page 10 (last 6 pages intended for self-directed work, largely blank). Strips of colored paper (popularly produced by Milton Bradley), tipped to the first page with names marked on several versos.

Amidst the drawing book frenzy of the late nineteenth century, Langdon Shook Thompson presented his Educational and Industrial System of Drawing as an experienced guide through others' methodologies, not as an original invention of his own. He published a dizzying number of series and variations: the Common School Course consisted of four drawing books and a manual for primary grades, plus three "Model and Object Drawing" books and a manual. Advanced courses were offered in Manual Training (2 manuals), Advanced Free Hand (4 drawing books), Aesthetic (6 drawing books and a manual), and Mechanical (6 drawing books and a manual). With some mix-and-match elements, Thompson endeavored to cover bases in terms of schools' varying intentions for art education. "Model and Object Drawing" series books could be substituted for the early numbers in both the Aesthetic and Mechanical Series, evidence of the diverging purposes for art education between schools. In 1898, Thompson was appointed Chairman of the National Education Association Committee of Ten, a group of art educators chosen to deliberate on elementary art education's means and proper purpose. Thompson's report, issued in 1902, concluded that beauty and aesthetics was more important than pictorial representation--though it was published with dissenting remarks from other committee members, including John S. Clark. (The Journal of Proceedings and Addresses of the National Educational Association, 1902, p594-614)