Arthur Wesley Dow taught Georgia O'Keeffe at Columbia University Teachers College and strongly influenced her artistic development.
O'Keeffe studied with Dow in New York in 1914 and 1915. His approach differed from instruction centered solely on copying nature. Dow emphasized the organized use of line, color, and tonal relationships, encouraging students to build compositions from fundamental visual elements.
That teaching helped O'Keeffe move away from the academic realism she had learned earlier. Her later abstractions, including the charcoal drawings that attracted Alfred Stieglitz's attention, reflected a more experimental understanding of composition. Dow did not simply provide a subject for her paintings; he offered a method for thinking about visual structure.
William Merritt Chase is another important teacher in O'Keeffe's biography, but he taught her at the Art Students League. The question concerns Teachers College, where Dow was the relevant instructor.