The Atelier Revival
The living line from Gammell's Boston atelier to today's schools: a cast-to-life ladder from Bargue plates through charcoal casts to the figure, sight-size measured against the model, and a master who charged no fees and covered his students' rent.
R. H. Ives Gammell charged his students nothing. Independently wealthy, he taught a handful at a time in his Fenway Studios space in Boston, covered their living costs, and handed them tickets to concerts and plays, on the conviction set out in his 1946 book Twilight of Painting that painting had fallen from its estate and the old atelier training was the way back. The modern atelier revival is that teaching line carried forward: from the French academic Jean-Léon Gérôme, through the Boston School painter William McGregor Paxton, to Gammell (1893-1981), and from Gammell to his student Richard Lack, who opened Atelier Lack in Minneapolis in 1969 and named the approach Classical Realism in 1982. Its method is the cast-to-life progression: copying Charles Bargue's drawing plates, then drawing plaster casts in charcoal, then painting them in grisaille, then still life, then the figure in monochrome and finally full colour, each stage passed only on demonstrated mastery, all measured sight-size with the drawing set beside the model at the same scale. Lack, called the father of the American atelier movement, trained close to a hundred painters, and his students founded the ateliers, the Florence Academy of Art among them, that teach the method worldwide today.
How the system worked
Small cohorts and a master's eye. Gammell took only three or four students at a time, chosen by invitation and apprenticeship. The modern ateliers admit by portfolio and application into multi-year full-time programs (roughly three years at the Florence Academy of Art, four at Grand Central Atelier, four to five under Lack), tailoring the entry point to a student's demonstrated skill.
The atelier, not the lecture hall: a few students working long-term under one master. Gammell kept his own studio (#401 at Fenway Studios) with students down the hall in #408 and a summer complex in Williamstown. Atelier Lack ran five days a week, mornings for individual cast and still-life work in personal cubicles, afternoons for group figure work. The Florence Academy of Art and Grand Central Atelier now run the same shape at scale, half the day on the figure, half on individual exercises.
The cast-to-life ladder, climbed one rung at a time. A student moves from Bargue plates to cast drawing to cast painting to still life to the figure, and advances to the next stage or year only on demonstrated mastery of the current one. It is the 19th-century academic sequence preserved intact into the present.
Individual critique, and mastery as the only gate. Gammell corrected directly on the drawing, sometimes standing on a small platform he called his "equalizer" to see the work from the student's exact viewpoint. There are no letter grades; a student paints casts until the casts are right, then is trusted with the figure.
Long studio days. Gammell delivered critiques around 10:30 a.m.; Atelier Lack ran 9 to 4, five days a week; the Florence Academy of Art works 9 to 6:30, Grand Central Atelier 8:30 to 5, Monday to Friday, with evening and weekend studio access. The training assumes full-time, multi-year commitment.
Blunt, individual, and on the work itself. Lack remembered Gammell's method as "very direct, very frank. No hyperbole; just right to the point," constantly asking a student to judge their own painting, and Delacroix, to sharpen the eye. The sight-size setup, easel beside the model, makes every correction a measured comparison rather than an opinion.
The span runs from nothing to five figures. Gammell charged no fees at all and subsidised his students; Atelier Lack, a non-profit, charged a modest fee helped by Greenshields Foundation grants. Today the same training carries full tuition: the Florence Academy of Art around 14,500 to 15,350 euros a year, Grand Central Atelier about $13,800, and Studio Incamminati near $18,915 (a higher $19,750 figure is unverified). All are 2025 to 2027 figures that change yearly.
The curriculum, in training order
The first rung. Students copy the lithographic plates of Charles Bargue's 19th-century drawing course to master contour, proportion, and the shapes of the shadows before drawing anything from life.
Charcoal drawings from plaster casts under fixed artificial light, studying proportion, value, and form without the complication of colour or a moving model. Grand Central Atelier sets "tippy casts" at angles to train the eye to translate three dimensions to two.
The same casts painted in monochrome oil, carrying the drawn discipline into paint handling and value before any colour is introduced.
The first colour work: painting arranged objects to learn colour relationships, composition, and the rendering of different textures.
The goal of the whole ladder. Students begin with figure drawing (small pencil studies of a few days, large charcoal studies of two to three months at Atelier Lack), then monochrome oil studies, then full-colour figure painting that can take several months.
Full-colour figure painting was the mark of a trained painter.
Run alongside the ladder. Gammell and Lack had students draw subjects from memory after studying them from life, and Lack had students lay skeletal and muscular overlays on their figure drawings to ground the surface in structure.
Materials, models, and the room
- Charcoal, graphite, and good paper. Drawing is in charcoal and graphite pencils on high-cotton paper; advanced cast drawings at the Florence Academy of Art move to toned paper worked up with white chalk. The material discipline is part of the training.
- Oil on primed linen. Painting is in oil (Winsor and Newton, Gamblin) on oil-primed linen, preferred over cotton duck; Grand Central Atelier teaches a spare palette of a white, a red, a yellow, a blue (ivory black can serve as the blue), and raw umber.
- Ground pigment and made frames. Craftsmanship is taught whole: students at Atelier Lack and the Florence Academy of Art learned to grind their own pigments, and Lack's students learned to build their own picture frames.
- The casts and the models. Plaster casts are the workhorses of the early years. For the figure, ateliers hire nude and clothed models for poses from a few minutes to many weeks; Atelier Lack pays figure models $20 an hour and portrait models $17 (as of early 2026), and Grand Central Atelier books models as independent contractors.
The people
Who taught
Jean-Léon Gérôme · the French-academic root
The École des Beaux-Arts master who trained William McGregor Paxton; the academic drawing discipline the whole revival preserves descends from his teaching.
The Boston School masters · Gammell's teachers
Edmund Tarbell, Philip Leslie Hale, and Joseph DeCamp taught Gammell, and he apprenticed with William McGregor Paxton for over two decades: the Boston Impressionist light joined to French draughtsmanship.
R. H. Ives Gammell · the bridge, Fenway Studios, Boston (1893-1981)
Taught three or four students at a time for free, subsidising their lives, and set the philosophy in Twilight of Painting (1946): a return to the atelier as painting's way back from decline.
Richard Lack · the revivalist, Atelier Lack, Minneapolis (1928-2009)
Studied under Gammell from 1950 to 1956, opened his own atelier in 1969, named the approach Classical Realism in 1982, and is called the father of the American atelier movement; his students founded the modern schools.
Frank Reilly · the Art Students League root of the parallel line
Grand Central Atelier descends not from Gammell but from a parallel American revival: its founder Jacob Collins trained with Ted Seth Jacobs, who trained with Reilly at the Art Students League.
Who trained here
Robert Cormier · Gammell student
Recalled Gammell's care with negative and positive shapes, and his line when a pose seemed to shift: "maybe the model has changed but I would prefer to think you were wrong."
David Curtis · Gammell student (1950-2021)
Described the routine: figures in the morning in one studio, the portrait model in another, landscapes in the afternoon with Gammell coming out into the field to critique.
Stephen Gjertson · Lack student
Set out the purpose of the early training: "to train the student's eye to accurately see the shapes, values, and colours of nature," a drudgery some found dulling and others exhilarating.
Daniel Graves · Lack student, founder of the Florence Academy of Art
Carried the Gammell-Lack method to Florence, where the Academy he founded became the movement's largest direct descendant, exporting the cast-to-life training worldwide.
The first-generation atelier founders · from the 1970s
Lack trained close to a hundred full-time students, several of whom (Dale Redpath, Cyd Wicker, Kirk Richards, and others) opened their own ateliers and continued his school as The Atelier Studio Program of Fine Arts.
The primary record
- R. H. Ives Gammell, Twilight of Painting (1946): the movement's manifesto, dedicated "To the painter, born or unborn, who shall lift the art of painting from the low estate to which it has fallen.". The founding argument for reviving the atelier.
- Richard Lack, On the Training of Painters with Notes on the Atelier Program (1969): the curriculum and philosophy of Atelier Lack, holding that "if Western Civilization wishes to retain the art of painting as a living part of its culture, this may be our last hope."
- R. H. Ives Gammell, The Boston Painters, 1900-1930 (posthumous): his account of the Boston School masters he learned from.
- Alan Banks and Peter Bougie, "Gammell and His Students" (Art Renewal Center, 2000): the interviews preserving Lack's, Cormier's, and other students' first-hand testimony to Gammell's teaching.
Open questions
- The founding year (1950) marks the earliest documented year of Gammell's atelier teaching, when Richard Lack began studying with him; Gammell taught earlier, and the lineage runs back through the Boston School and Jean-Léon Gérôme.
- The revival is less a single tree than a forest: the Florence Academy of Art descends directly from the Gammell-Lack line, but Grand Central Atelier and Studio Incamminati are parallel revivals rooted in other American traditions (the Art Students League), sharing the philosophy rather than the descent.
- Studio Incamminati's annual tuition is cited as both $18,915 and $19,750; the higher figure is unverified, and all modern fees are 2025 to 2027 figures that change yearly.
- Sight-size is a training tool for seeing the whole (the "big look"), not a mechanical copying device, though it is often misread as the latter.
- Richard Lack is recorded as training "98 or 99" full-time students; the exact count is uncertain.
Common questions
What is the atelier revival?
A modern movement to preserve and teach traditional, skill-based realist drawing and painting through the old atelier system: a few students in long-term, full-time study under a master. It runs from R. H. Ives Gammell's Boston teaching through Richard Lack's Minneapolis atelier to today's schools, and Lack named its approach Classical Realism in 1982.
Who was R. H. Ives Gammell?
A Boston painter (1893-1981) trained in the Boston School who became the bridge of the atelier revival. He taught a few students at a time for free at Fenway Studios, subsidised their living, and wrote Twilight of Painting (1946), a call to return to atelier training. His student Richard Lack carried the method into a formal school.
What is the cast-to-life method?
The atelier training sequence, climbed in order: copy Charles Bargue's drawing plates, draw plaster casts in charcoal, paint the casts in grisaille, paint still life for colour, then draw and paint the figure, first in monochrome, then in full colour. A student advances only after mastering each stage.
What is sight-size drawing?
A measured method in which the easel and canvas stand beside the subject and the artist works from a fixed spot where the drawing and the subject appear the same size, allowing direct one-to-one comparison. Gammell taught it not as copying but as a way to train the eye to see the whole figure at once.
What is Classical Realism?
The name Richard Lack gave in 1982 to the atelier revival's approach: rigorous French-academic draughtsmanship joined to the atmospheric colour and light of the Boston Impressionists, taught through the cast-to-life sequence. It describes the Gammell-Lack line and the schools that grew from it.
How are today's ateliers connected to Gammell?
The Florence Academy of Art descends directly from him: its founder Daniel Graves studied with Lack, who studied with Gammell. Grand Central Atelier and Studio Incamminati are parallel revivals rooted in the Art Students League rather than in Gammell, so the movement is best seen as a forest of related schools, not one lineage.
Part of the Academies atlas, how painting was actually taught, system by system. The living version of this question: atelier vs online course, and the painters themselves in the Painter Atlas.