William Rimmer: His Boston Academy

"Master Builder" by William Rimmer

"The project of founding a school which should embody and carry into operation his principles and methods of art instruction had been the strongest desire of Dr. William Rimmer's life; and although with the failure of his plans at the Cooper Institute he seemed to abandon all hope of a full realization of this, he still made one more attempt in Boston.

He sent out the following circular to advertise [excerpted]:

'Dr. Rimmer, having withdrawn from the directorship of his School of Design in New York (an office held by him for the last four years), desires respectfully to inform his friends and the public, that he will resume his classes in Boston, at Hall No. 21 (for the present Wesleyan Association Building, Bromfield Street. Class days, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, from ten to twelve, A.M.

Dr. Rimmer solicits attention to the fact, that this is the only school in the country in which art anatomy in connection with sculpture and painting, and ethnology in its relations to art, are taught. In returning to Boston, he does so with the intention of making such a school as shall supply to the art student all that mere instruction can give.

Terms, ten dollars per month, payable in advance...'

Dr. Rimmer's class opened with twenty pupils; and from this time until its close, the autumn of 1876, the average attendance was about the same. Perhaps the most interesting experience of the artist in this connection was with his children's class. He was very fond of children. 'We live our lives over again in our children,' he wrote to his daughter, 'and must enter into all their joys and sorrows as our own.' His desire to start them correctly and intelligently in drawing and the practice of art shows one of his most delightful characteristics. Even in this class the doctor insisted upon the attempt to express an idea, in preference to exactitude in copying, and the doctor noted that the children were 'fairly wild with enthusiasm' with what they were learning to do under his instruction."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Art Life of William Rimmer: Sculptor, Painter, and Physician" by Truman Howe Bartlett.)