Florence Academy of Art: Students Master Basics

To achieve anything that lasts, talent, skill, and discipline are essentials. I can’t say what means the most. I know lots of sloths with talent, and they’re fun at parties. And the meticulously skilled, though without vision or pizzazz, well, they make the trains run on time. Skill, though, what I would call a mastery of technique, seems decisive. It’s not only facility with tools, and the eye’s a tool, but it’s materials. Developing that facility takes concentration and thought as well as hones intention. Even when talent’s a physical gift — like the flexibility of the hands that Picasso, Goya, and Fragonard had — it needs to be trained.

The Florence Academy of Art (FAA), near the Arno in Florence, is one of the few schools in the world teaching art through the mastery of basics, primarily drawing. I’ve known about it for years through my interest in the old French atelier system, the zenith of which was the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 19th century. It wasn’t the French pupils that drew me but the Americans. Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, John La Farge, Abbott Thayer, William Morris Hunt, and Thomas Dewing were Paris-trained in atelier. There were many others. After the Civil War, affluent Americans who were aspiring artists went to Paris to study at the best schools where French artists learned. Before this, American artists sometimes traveled to Europe, took a course or two, but mostly absorbed the scenery, art, and cultures ad hoc.

About the Author

Brian T. Allen

Brian T. Allen is National Review’s art critic.

To achieve anything that lasts, talent, skill, and discipline are essentials. I can’t say what means the most. I know lots of sloths with talent, and they’re fun at parties. And the meticulously skilled, though without vision or pizzazz, well, they make the trains run on time. Skill, though, what I would call a mastery of technique, seems decisive. It’s not only facility with tools, and the eye’s a tool, but it’s materials. Developing that facility takes concentration and thought as well as hones intention. Even when talent’s a physical gift — like the flexibility of the hands that Picasso, Goya, and Fragonard had — it needs to be trained.

The Florence Academy of Art (FAA), near the Arno in Florence, is one of the few schools in the world teaching art through the mastery of basics, primarily drawing. I’ve known about it for years through my interest in the old French atelier system, the zenith of which was the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the 19th century. It wasn’t the French pupils that drew me but the Americans. Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent, John La Farge, Abbott Thayer, William Morris Hunt, and Thomas Dewing were Paris-trained in atelier. There were many others. After the Civil War, affluent Americans who were aspiring artists went to Paris to study at the best schools where French artists learned. Before this, American artists sometimes traveled to Europe, took a course or two, but mostly absorbed the scenery, art, and cultures ad hoc.