Boys Going to School,

ca. 1903

<p>"Spacing is the very groundwork of Design," wrote the celebrated teacher Arthur Wesley Dow in his seminal publication, <em>Composition</em> (1899). Both of these prints demonstrate White’s embrace of Dow’s ideas, either through reading his treatise or going directly to his sources in Japanese art. For <em>Drops of Rain</em>, White made a test exposure of the globe alone, then positioned Maynard so that he gazed wondrously at the luminous orb, as if entranced by the geometric perfection of nature equally visible in each tiny drop of rain clinging to the expanse of screen. Using the same technique of filling the top of the print with natural patterns, <em>Boys Going to School </em>finds beauty in a routine wintry tromp through town. </p>