He was a pupil at the Art Students' League in New York and of William Merritt Chase, and a thorough student of classical art. He conceived the idea that the study of arithmetic with the aid of geometrical designs was the foundation of the proportion and symmetry in Greek architecture, sculpture and ceramics. Careful examination and measurements of classical buildings in Greece, among them the Parthenon, the temple of Apollo at Bassæ, of Zeus at Olympia and Athenæ at Ægina, prompted him to formulate the theory of "dynamic symmetry" as demonstrated in his works Dynamic Symmetry: The Greek Vase (1920) and The Elements of Dynamic Symmetry (1926). It created a great deal of discussion. He found a disciple in Dr. Lacey D. Caskey, the author of Geometry of Greek Vases (1922).