Alon Bement taught Georgia O'Keeffe at the University of Virginia and influenced her early painting.
O'Keeffe attended the University of Virginia during summer sessions from 1912 to 1914, where she studied under Alon Bement. Bement was an educator connected with the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, whose approach emphasized composition, line, color, and personal expression rather than merely copying nature.
Those ideas helped O'Keeffe move beyond the academic realism she had learned earlier. After studying with Bement, she took courses with Dow at Teachers College, Columbia University, in New York. She later applied these principles in a series of abstract charcoal drawings made in 1915.
Bement is often confused with O'Keeffe's other teachers. William Merritt Chase taught her at the Art Students League, while Dow taught her directly at Teachers College. The three names belong to different stages of her education, but Bement was the University of Virginia instructor who introduced the relevant Dow-influenced approach there.