Design in Deerfield

Arthur Wesley Dow and Designing Nature

Soft Focus Landscape

The Allen sisters' Forest Pool is another example of a Deerfield Arts and Crafts landscape composition. Frances and Mary Allen were masters of at conveying palpable atmospheric effects aided by the use of platinum prints. This blurring of detail encourages one to focus on the photograph's overall composition, rather than its parts. Like the landscapes of the Blue and White Society, Arthur Wesley Dow and Chauncey Thomas, the composition of the Forest Pool consists of a harmonious arrangement of vertical and horizontal elements suggesting that the Allens carefully considered the art issues of pattern and spacing as they framed their picture.