Going further
A working library, a few good schools.
A website on painting can describe the door, point out the handle, and tell you to turn it. It cannot open the door for you. What follows is the working bibliography of the books, ateliers, and resources that have proved most useful to serious students of the classical tradition. It will keep you in good company for many years.
A library, a model, and a north window. With these three a painter may be made anywhere. R. H. Ives Gammell
01The essential bookshelf
On drawing
Charles Bargue: Drawing Course
Reprinted by ACR Edition. Two hundred plates, three sections, to be copied in order. Buy the largest reproduction you can afford and pin it beside your drawing board.
Harold Speed — The Practice and Science of Drawing
1913. The clearest English-language exposition of academic drawing principles. Out of copyright; available free on Internet Archive.
Juliette Aristides — Classical Drawing Atelier
2006. The best modern textbook of the atelier method, with clear photographs of work in progress.
Andrew Loomis — Drawing the Head and Hands
1956. The American illustrators' approach — less rigorous than Bargue but enormously practical.
Robert Beverly Hale — Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters
1964. One hundred masterworks analysed in terms of underlying construction. Inexhaustibly useful.
Kimon Nicolaïdes — The Natural Way to Draw
1941. A different tradition — less academic, more direct-observation — but the exercises complement the classical method beautifully.
On painting
Cennino Cennini — Il Libro dell'Arte
c. 1390. The earliest surviving handbook of painting, written by an apprentice of Giotto's grand-pupil. Translated by Daniel V. Thompson.
Solomon J. Solomon — The Practice of Oil Painting
1910. The classic English-language manual of academic painting, written by a Royal Academician.
Max Doerner — The Materials of the Artist
1934. The standard reference on pigments, mediums, and the chemistry of the paint film. Indispensable.
Ralph Mayer — The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques
1940. The American counterpart to Doerner. More cautious about traditional materials; equally thorough.
Jean-Georges Vibert — The Science of Painting
1891. A late-nineteenth-century French academician's testimony, full of opinions and useful prejudices.
Frederic Taubes — The Mastery of Oil Painting
1953. A compact and lucid summary of the layered method, by a painter who taught it for decades at the Art Students League.
On anatomy
Stephen Rogers Peck — Atlas of Human Anatomy for the Artist
1951. The classic American text. Every plate worth copying.
Paul Richer — Artistic Anatomy
1890. Translated by Robert Beverly Hale. The French academic standard, beautifully illustrated.
John Henry Vanderpoel — The Human Figure
1907. On the construction and proportion of the figure rather than its internal anatomy.
Gottfried Bammes — Die Gestalt des Menschen
The German academic reference. The most thorough plates available in any language.
On theory & the painter's life
Joshua Reynolds — Discourses on Art
1769–90. Fifteen lectures given by the first president of the Royal Academy. Read one a year for the rest of your life.
Eugène Delacroix — The Journal
The greatest painter's diary in any language.
Robert Henri — The Art Spirit
1923. Not academic, but every page is true.
R. H. Ives Gammell — The Twilight of Painting
1946. The polemic that began the modern atelier revival.
James Gurney — Color and Light
2010. Modern, but with one foot in the academic tradition. The best contemporary teaching on observed colour.
02Ateliers teaching the classical method
A partial list of present-day schools where the classical course is taught in serious form. If you can move to one of these cities for two to four years, you'll progress faster than any quantity of solitary study can achieve.
Europe
Florence Academy of Art
Founded 1991 by Daniel Graves. The largest of the modern ateliers. Branches in Florence, Jersey City, and Gothenburg.
Angel Academy of Art
Founded by Michael John Angel. A four-year diploma in classical drawing and painting.
Charles H. Cecil Studios
The strictest of the sight-size schools, descended directly from the Boston atelier of R. H. Ives Gammell.
Barcelona Academy of Art
A rigorous four-year programme drawing from both the Spanish and Florentine traditions.
Studio Escalier
Paris and Argenton-Château. Run by Timothy Stotz and Michelle Tully, with a focus on figurative painting from observation.
London Atelier of Representational Art
Long-form full-time training in classical drawing and painting in the heart of London.
Bridgeman Academy
Atelier-style instruction in a UK university town.
Repin Institute
The direct continuation of the Imperial Academy. Six-year programme; the most demanding curriculum in the world.
North America
Grand Central Atelier
Long Island City. Founded by Jacob Collins. The most influential American atelier of the revival.
Florence Academy of Art — US
The American branch of the Florentine school.
Aristides Atelier
Founded by Juliette Aristides at the Gage Academy of Art.
Georgetown Atelier
Three-year classical training programme.
Ryder Studio
An intimate atelier in the high desert, in the Boston-Gammell lineage.
Atelier Lack
Founded 1969 by Richard Lack — the first atelier of the modern revival. Now The Atelier in Minneapolis.
Academy of Realist Art
Long-form classical training in Toronto.
03Online resources
Art Renewal Center
artrenewal.org — the largest online archive of high-resolution academic paintings.
Google Arts & Culture
Gigapixel reproductions of the great paintings of the world's museums. Free. Zoom in on the brushstrokes.
New Masters Academy
Video instruction by living atelier teachers in a subscription model. The closest you can come to an atelier from your living room.
Internet Archive
archive.org — out-of-copyright editions of Solomon, Speed, Reynolds, and most of the foundational texts. Free.
Wikimedia Commons
Public-domain reproductions of nearly every painting referenced on this site. High-resolution; free to download.
The Da Vinci Initiative
Classical drawing curriculum for K–12 teachers, derived from the atelier tradition.
A last word on materials
Cheap brushes and student-grade paint are a false economy. Buy fewer brushes of the highest quality; buy fewer tubes of the truest pigment. A single Kolinsky sable round will outlast a dozen synthetics if treated with care, and good paint, ground in real linseed oil, lays differently from the chalk-loaded student grades. The painter who saves at the art store pays at the easel.
If a full atelier isn't possible
Much can be gained from short-form alternatives:
- Summer intensives. Most of the ateliers above run two-, four-, and six-week summer programmes. An inexpensive way to test whether the full curriculum is for you.
- Mentorships. Many practising classical painters take on a small number of remote mentees, reviewing photographs of work in progress every fortnight. Reach out directly — most painters reply.
- Local life-drawing groups. Nearly every city has at least one weekly long-pose drawing session. Even one a week, religiously attended, will keep your eye sharp.
A final word
You've reached the end of this site. The site has reached only the beginning of your work. Close the tab and go to the easel. Draw a sphere. Paint an egg. Copy a Bargue plate. Repeat tomorrow, and the day after, and the year after.
The classical tradition doesn't promise quick success. It promises a slow, certain mastery, available to anyone willing to pay the price in hours of patient looking. The hand follows the eye, the eye follows the heart, and at last the painting follows them both.
Nulla dies sine linea. Not a day without a line. Pliny, on the painter Apelles