As in most forms of art, there is a time tested tradition of training that goes back for centuries, being passed down from master to student. The apprenticeship model provides the most in depth training in any respective field. In ancient Greece, sculptors took on students as apprentices. Medieval Europe formulated the guild system, basically a systematic apprenticeship where a small group of students would live, study, and work for an acknowledged master. Upon meeting the standards of the guild, they would become masters in their own right and take on students of their own, each adding to the accumulating bank of knowledge. By the mid 1600s, in response to the then “over regulated and restricted” guild system, the French government created the Academie Royale de Painture et de Sculpture. This lasted until Napoleon, who dissolved it and then established the Ecole des Beaux Arts.This was unique in the fact that the student was given the choice of which teacher they wished to study with. Paris soon became the center of the art world where students from around the globe flocked to study. Ecole des Beaux was primarily state sponsored, with the school year culminating at the official Salon. A successful showing at the Salon all but guaranteed a successful career, and rejection or lack of notice often led to obscurity and a life of poverty. Most patronage at this time still came from the state, the church, or the aristocracy, which led to most young artists desperately trying to win the attention of the Salon jurors, who were very academic and often tended to be somewhat narrow in their outlook. Individual creativity began to be somewhat stifled at the expense of beautiful craftsmanship. Eventually, this led to off-shoots developing in both training options, (often called Ateliers), along with multiple new venues for showing work. This corresponded with the growing industrial revolution, which eventually created an affluent middle class. Americas fortunes were also on the rise, with many wealthy Americans wanting to live like the European upper class, which included the collection of fine art. With the grip of the salon loosened and the growing and varied patronage, Paris at the end of the 1800s became a pinnacle in the history of the visual arts. The Atelier model continued to spread with a number of studio-schools also forming in America.

Then came WW1, the collapse of many world governments, a move away from a ruling aristocracy, a horrendous flu outbreak, communism, Darwinism, a rising secularism… And the whole world was shifted. This was followed by a world wide depression and another horrendous world war capped off by a nuclear policy of mutual accused destruction. The modernist movement permeated the arts as a very legitimate reaction to all of this upheaval and turmoil. But it was was only in the visual arts that the idea of a classical education was permanently abandoned. The result from this shift in taste and philosophy is that with many of the young students embracing the new modernism, and most of the well-trained traditional artists falling out of favor and into obscurity was that by the 1950s, much of the accumulated knowledge on the craft of representational painting resided in a relatively small handful of artists. Very few of these remaining painters took on students of their own.

One painter who did teach, was R.H. Ives Gammell. Born in Boston (1893). Gammell was independently wealthy and had studied in both Paris and America under some of the finest painters of his day. His artistic lineage could be traced back, from student to teacher, to Jacques-Louis David, the famous painter of Napoleon. After WW1, Gammell returned to Boston, and was alarmed by what he perceived to be the rapid disintegration of the western art world… So he decided to retaliate. With his wealth insulating him from having to earn a living, he wrote extensively against the modernist trend and eventually began to take on students of his own. Richard Lack was one of his first and most successful students who, following his formal training and studying in Europe abroad, moved back to his native Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1969 to open his own school, Atelier Lack. Jeffrey T. Larson (GLAFA founder and head instructor), was fortunate to be accepted into Lacks full-time program in 1980. At that time, Only about half a dozen schools in the world still offered this unique training.

Today however, the Atelier movement is flourishing and has taken root once again across the globe. Young aspiring artists have multiple options to apprentice with living representational painters. Great Lakes Academy is proud to be a part of this movement and is dedicated to the upholding of these timeless traditions.