Design
SCHOOLS OF. Prior to mediæval times every master of a craft and every artist or decorator had in his employ a number of persons who by working on his tasks for small wages learned the secret of his skill. This individual method of instructing beginners disappeared with the use of the craft guilds which laid down the terms for apprenticeship to a trade in very exact measures and from which no master craftsman was allowed to deviate. From 900 to about 1600 this was the only method of instructing beginners in the methods of design. Instruction was, of course, subsidiary to the main purpose of these regulations which was to enhance and protect the profits of the guild members. When about the 15th and 16th centuries great artists such as Raphael and Da Vinci drew about them numerous assistants who wished to learn of them, of them , the guild regulations began to be less effective, and in the case of artists disappeared entirely. But it was rot until the founding of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts by Louis XIV. in 1648 that the modern conception of schools of design was embodied. In this school regular instruction was offered to students and prizes offered for the best work in painting, sculpture, engraving, architecture, and work in precious stones and metals.
The studio work in the Royal Academy remained on the old apprenticeship basis and in painting and sculpture this still remains both in America and in England.
Exceptions to the use of this method in the latter two countries are some of the professional schools in America and the South Kensington Schools in London .
In architecture the apprenticeship system has been replaced in America by the architectural schools.
The founding of schools of design was not frequent in Europe until after the expositions of 1851, 1855, and 1865 had shown the superiority of the work of the DESMIDIACEA French artists over those of England and Germany. Then from 1855 to 1880 in England and Germany many schools of design were founded in the great industrial centers, and museums of industrial art were opened which have served to stimulate the work of artists. The United States was slower to accept the lessons taught by the great expositions , for it was not until after the Centennial of 1876 that schools of design were opened. Characteristically their foundaments, national, State or municipal, but largely to the benefactions of wealthy patrons. Not until the opening of the 20th century did the governments in the United States take a part in encouraging artists and schools of design, and to a large extent such schools and museums of art are in private hands . Architecture has received the most encouragement of any of the fine arts in America , the schools established by Cornell, Columbia, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute tion in the States was not due to governfavorably with of Technology compare favorably with the European schools. Technical instrucschools.
Technical instruction in industrial art is very general in America, but as yet schools for those interested in painting and sculpture cannot compare with their European models .
Some of the more famous of the schools are the École des Beaux-Arts, National Academy of Design, National Art Schools of South Kensington, Berlin Bau-Akademie, and the Vienna Imperial Art Institue.