The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Chicago's ladder ran from lithographic copy plates to painting the figure, mornings on academic practice, afternoons on the trades, and Vanderpoel telling students they were only dirtying the paper.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago began in 1866 as an artists' cooperative, the Chicago Academy of Design, formed so that a group of painters could share the cost of models and rooms. Its trustees resigned in 1879 to found the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, which took the name Art Institute of Chicago in 1882. It ran the French academic ladder on a Midwestern schedule, and it ran it at scale: 2,136 students enrolled across day, evening, Saturday, and summer classes in 1900-01, when the antique classes brought in $17,326.32 in fees against the life classes' $9,879.39. Most of the school sat at the bottom of the ladder. The plan, in director W. M. R. French's own words that year, was "to spend the forenoon upon regular academic practice and devote the afternoon to the various classes in illustration, still life, composition, perspective, anatomy, sketching, etc." Its defining teacher was John Vanderpoel, who had been a student of the same school, and whose figure drawing built the body from its large planes. Georgia O'Keeffe and J. C. Leyendecker both learned to draw in his classes.
How the system worked
Open, and stated so. The school's circular of instruction says it was open to all, without examination, and admission turned on paying the fee rather than on submitting work. The gates came later and were internal: a student advanced from one class to the next on the instructors' judgment, drawings of a prescribed character had to go to the Faculty before the life classes, and the life classes had to be reached before the painting classes.
A teaching half bolted to a museum, and by 1900 five departments: drawing, painting, sculpture, decorative designing, and architecture, the last of them run in affiliation with the Armour Institute of Technology rather than by the Art Institute alone. Around that core sat illustration, a normal course training art teachers, and Saturday classes for juveniles. The school moved from rented rooms on Wabash Avenue to the Michigan Avenue building at the close of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, which had been put up for the fair and the Art Institute jointly and was the only permanent building the fair left behind.
The printed sequence ran in five steps: casts of ornament and fragments of the antique, then full-length casts of antique statues, then the living model nude and draped, then painting from still life, then painting from the living model. Still life as the bridge into paint is the Chicago move. The National Academy of Design in New York put still life at the top of its ladder instead, in a Painting School that only life-class students could enter, and struck it from the printed rules within two years. Underneath the Chicago ladder sat the copying stage. Ripley Hitchcock, describing the school in the Century in 1886, found the teachers mostly Munich-trained but the working practices French, "like the use of Julian's flats, and drawing from blocks to get ideas of construction."
Advancement was by the instructors' judgment at each rung, with drawings submitted to the Faculty for the life classes. There was no degree. Standing came from the exhibitions instead, and from 1897 the Art Institute ran a juried Annual Exhibition of Works by Artists of Chicago and the Vicinity, which gave students and recent students a public wall to be measured on.
Long days and a working evening. The circular gives the school open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. with evening classes from 7 to 9, and by 1909-10 day classes 9 to 4 and evenings 7 to 9.30. The shape of the day matters more than the clock: French's 1900-01 report describes forenoons on regular academic practice and afternoons on illustration, still life, composition, perspective, anatomy, and sketching, so that students would "gain an acquaintance with the figure and with pictorial effects, and get relief from the severe elementary practice."
Instructor critique through the ladder, and for twenty-two years at the centre of it, Vanderpoel. He lectured on anatomy in the basement of the Art Institute with a skeleton on either side of him, in a voice a listener remembered as quiet and clear as a meadow brook, and his corrections could be flat. To one student too pleased with a drawing: "You're only dirtying your paper. Start another drawing."
Charged per class and per term, and the receipts show where the students actually were. In 1900-01 the antique classes took $17,326.32, the life classes $9,879.39, designing $5,306.49, the evening classes $4,586.66, the Saturday juvenile classes $4,135.41, the new summer school $2,005.20, modelling $1,195.19, the architectural classes $1,127.00, and the Saturday normal class $1,107.75, with $989.65 more in locker fees. The antique room paid for the school.
The curriculum, in training order
The stage under the ladder, and the one the school's own circulars pass over. Hitchcock found students in 1886 working from "Julian's flats," the lithographic plates of Bernard-Romain Julien, and drawing from blocks to get ideas of construction. Copy the two-dimensional model first, then the solid, then the cast.
Hands, feet, and masks from the cast collection before the full-length statues, worked up as finished drawings with careful modelling, for form, proportion, and light and shade without a model who moves.
Faculty judgment moved a student up. There was no fixed term at the antique.
Nude and draped models, once the antique was passed. Entry required drawings of a prescribed character submitted to the Faculty, and the life classes had to be entered before a student could enter the painting classes at all.
The Chicago bridge. Painting began on still life rather than on the model, so the craft problems of the medium were met on a subject that holds still and costs nothing to keep. By 1900 still life also ran as an afternoon class alongside illustration and composition.
The top of the core ladder, and the last of the five printed steps.
What made the school a trade school as much as an academy. Illustration with costumed models and the working media of the magazines, decorative designing for glass, metal, and textiles, a normal course for teachers, and architecture across four years with the Armour Institute. The night classes filled with lithographers, draughtsmen, and engravers already working in the city, some of them taught by the heads of design firms.
Materials, models, and the room
- The cast collection. Ornament and antique fragments through full figures, and the museum half of the institution supplying the school half. The Art Institute's early collections were largely plaster casts of European sculpture, bought to be drawn from.
- Julien's plates. Bernard-Romain Julien (1802-1871) was a French lithographer whose Cours de Dessin and Cours Elementaire plates were used as a drawing course on both sides of the Atlantic. Hitchcock names them in use in Chicago in 1886. They are the ancestor of the Bargue plates the ateliers use today, and they are the reason the Chicago ladder starts before the cast room.
- Charcoal, crayon, pencil, oil, water-colour. The circular's own list: charcoal, crayon, and pencil for drawing, oil and water-colours for painting, with a materials list available on application. Students bought their own. The school also taught pastel, monotype, and etching, which Hitchcock in 1886 thought an unusual range for an American art school.
- The building the fair left. The school worked in rented quarters at 302 Wabash Avenue until the Michigan Avenue building on the lakefront came to the Art Institute at the close of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The fair built it for its own congresses and for the Art Institute at once, and it was the only permanent building the exposition left standing.
- The two skeletons. Vanderpoel's anatomy lectures ran in the basement with a skeleton standing on either side of him. The anatomy was taught as an afternoon class alongside perspective and composition, not as a separate science, and it fed straight back into the morning's figure drawing.
The people
Who taught
John Vanderpoel · instructor from 1880, chief instructor in drawing 1888-1910
The school's own product and its defining teacher. He came up through the Chicago Academy of Design, took a travelling scholarship to the Académie Julian in Paris under Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre, and returned in 1888 as chief instructor and lecturer in drawing and construction of the figure, a post he held for twenty-two years. He taught the body built from its large planes before any detail, and set it down in The Human Figure (1907), which had run to ten editions and 45,000 copies by 1921.
Lorado Taft · from 1886 to 1929
The sculpture department's builder, trained at the École des Beaux-Arts, and a rare advocate for his women students at a time when the commissions went elsewhere. He took several of them on as assistants for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, the group that became known as the White Rabbits. He was still giving lecture courses at the school in 1900.
W. M. R. French · director until his death in 1914
Not a teacher but the author of the school's shape. His annual reports are where the plan of instruction, the enrollment, and the fees are actually written down.
Frederick Warren Freer · the 1890s
A Chicago writer in 1895 described his job as instilling ideas of form and colour into young people who were beginning to find out that art is long.
Charles E. Boutwood · from the late 1880s
English-born painter, a founder and first president of the Chicago Society of Artists, and one of the school's long-serving instructors.
Martha S. Baker · junior teacher, c. 1900
Named in the 1900-01 report for establishing the elementary classes in light-and-shade and colour from objects: the rung below the antique, built by a junior member of staff.
Who trained here
Georgia O'Keeffe · 1905-1906
Studied anatomical drawing and composition under Vanderpoel and ranked at the top of her class. Typhoid fever ended the year and she left Chicago to recover, going on in 1907 to the Art Students League in New York and William Merritt Chase. She called Vanderpoel one of the few real teachers she had known, and held her first retrospective at the Art Institute in 1943.
J. C. Leyendecker · the 1890s
Apprenticed at sixteen to the J. Manz engraving house and took the school's night classes, which Hitchcock had already found full of lithographers and engravers. He studied drawing and anatomy under Vanderpoel before leaving for the Académie Julian with his brother Frank in 1896.
John Vanderpoel · student in the 1870s
He learned to draw at the Chicago Academy of Design under Lawrence Carmichael Earle, James Farrington Gookins, and Henry Fenton Spread, then taught in the same institution for thirty years. The school's method was largely made by a man it had made.
Frederick Carl Frieseke · the 1890s
Another Vanderpoel student, and the American Impressionist route out of the Chicago cast rooms.
The primary record
- The Art Institute of Chicago, annual report for 1900-01, director W. M. R. French: "The general plan in the school now is to spend the forenoon upon regular academic practice and devote the afternoon to the various classes in illustration, still life, composition, perspective, anatomy, sketching, etc." The same report gives the enrollment (752 day, 560 evening, 660 Saturday, 164 summer, 2,136 in all), the school account receipts by class, and the summer school "established for the first time this year.". The single most useful verified document for this record. Digitized at the Internet Archive.
- Ripley Hitchcock, "The Chicago Art Institute," Century, August 1886: the teachers "for the most part have been trained at Munich, but practices which originated in French ateliers, like the use of Julian's flats, and drawing from blocks to get ideas of construction, are common here." The same account records night classes attended by many lithographers, draughtsmen, and engravers, and reckons that "not more than one or two per cent." of the students became professional artists.. The period witness that resolves what the school actually put in front of a beginner.
- The Circular of Instruction of the Art School, 1891-92: the five-step progression from ornament casts to painting from life, the rule that a student is advanced "upon the judgment of the instructors," the requirement that drawings of a prescribed character be submitted to the Faculty for the life classes, the statement that the school is open to all without examination, and the materials list of charcoal, crayon, and pencil for drawing, oil and water-colours for painting.. Held in the Art Institute's institutional archives (AIC Scrapbooks, volume 5). No public copy was reachable for this pass, so the wording here is carried from the research dossier rather than read from the document. Flagged in uncertainties.
- John H. Vanderpoel, The Human Figure (1907): the school's core drawing instruction turned into a book, illustrated with his own drawings and still in print. Ten editions and about 45,000 copies had sold by 1921.
- Georgia O'Keeffe, Georgia O'Keeffe (Viking, 1976): "one of the few real teachers I have known," on Vanderpoel.
- The Illinois Historical Art Project essay on John Henry Vanderpoel: his own training at the Chicago Academy of Design, the 1888 appointment for twenty-two years, the basement anatomy lectures with a skeleton on either side, the school's reputation as a school of severe drawing though the discipline was not as severe, and the correction "You're only dirtying your paper. Start another drawing."
Open questions
- The Circular of Instruction for 1891-92 survives in the Art Institute's institutional archives rather than in a public digital copy. Its five-step sequence and its quoted rules are carried here from the research dossier and were not read against the document itself. Everything else in this record was checked against a reachable source.
- The dossier's per-term fee schedule for 1891-92 and 1909-10 (day, evening, Saturday, matriculation, and locker rates) is dropped for the same reason. The 1900-01 receipts given above are from the annual report and are firm.
- Vanderpoel's Paris years are given two ways. The Illinois Historical Art Project has him winning a travelling scholarship to the Académie Julian in 1885 and returning in 1888; other accounts give the study as 1886 to 1888. The teaching dates on either side of it are not in dispute.
- Whether the school ever adopted the Bargue and Gérôme Cours de Dessin by name is still unconfirmed. What is documented is the earlier Julien plates and block drawing, in 1886.
- Nothing is recorded about the models: no names, no pay rates, no posing schedules. The school's own publications do not carry them.
- The claim that the required drawing paper was Michelet paper is unverified and is not stated here as fact.
- Written rules of student conduct have not surfaced. The only account of the atmosphere is that the school was known for severe drawing while the discipline was not severe, and that a student of the later 1890s remembered initiations and high jinks.
Common questions
What is the School of the Art Institute of Chicago?
The teaching half of the Art Institute of Chicago, and one of the largest art schools in America by 1900, with 2,136 students enrolled across day, evening, Saturday, and summer classes. It began in 1866 as an artists' cooperative called the Chicago Academy of Design, whose trustees resigned in 1879 to found the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, renamed the Art Institute of Chicago in 1882. It taught the French academic ladder with a full set of trade departments around it, and it is still one of the country's major art schools.
How did training progress at SAIC historically?
In five printed steps: casts of ornament and fragments of the antique, full-length antique casts, the living model drawn nude and draped, painting from still life, then painting from the living model. Advancement at each rung was on the instructors' judgment, and the life classes had to be reached before a student could enter the painting classes. Underneath all of it sat the copying stage, since in 1886 students were still working from Julien's lithographic plates and drawing from blocks to learn construction.
How was the Chicago day actually structured?
Split in two, and the director wrote it down. In 1900-01 W. M. R. French described the plan as spending the forenoon on regular academic practice and the afternoon on illustration, still life, composition, perspective, anatomy, and sketching. The afternoon existed so students would meet the figure and pictorial effects early and get, in his words, relief from the severe elementary practice. Evening classes ran from 7, and they filled with lithographers, draughtsmen, and engravers who already had day jobs in the city.
Who was the great teacher at SAIC?
John Vanderpoel, who had been a student of the same school. He trained at the Chicago Academy of Design, took a travelling scholarship to the Académie Julian under Boulanger and Lefebvre, and came back in 1888 as chief instructor in drawing, a post he held for twenty-two years. He taught the figure built from its large planes before any detail and set the method down in The Human Figure in 1907. Georgia O'Keeffe called him one of the few real teachers she had known.
What did it cost, and where were most of the students?
Fees were charged per class and per term, and the receipts say more than the rates do. In 1900-01 the antique classes took $17,326.32 and the life classes $9,879.39, so the cast rooms brought in nearly twice what the life rooms did. Designing took $5,306.49, the evening classes $4,586.66, and the Saturday juvenile classes $4,135.41. Most of the school was at the bottom of the ladder or off it entirely, which is what an American art school of that size actually looked like.
Did many SAIC students become artists?
Very few, and the school's contemporaries said so plainly. Writing in the Century in 1886, Ripley Hitchcock reckoned that most students took art for amusement or as an accomplishment, some became teachers, and not more than one or two per cent became professional artists. The trade departments in illustration, decorative design, and architecture existed because that was the honest shape of the demand.
Who trained at SAIC?
Georgia O'Keeffe studied anatomical drawing and composition under Vanderpoel in 1905-06 and ranked at the top of her class, until typhoid fever ended the year and sent her home. J. C. Leyendecker took the night classes while apprenticed to the J. Manz engraving house, then left for the Académie Julian in 1896. Frederick Carl Frieseke came through the same drawing classes. Vanderpoel himself was a student there before he taught there.
Part of the Academies atlas, how painting was actually taught, system by system. The living version of this question: atelier vs online course, and the painters themselves in the Painter Atlas.