Charles H. Cecil Studios Florence Italy

The aim of the Charles H. Cecil Studios is to preserve and advance the sight-size tradition of drawing and painting from life, and to perpetuate the atelier training that is essential to its future.
Sight-size is both a visual method and a philosophy, handed down over the centuries from master to pupil in private ateliers. Fundamentally a portrait practice, it is a way of working to the scale of life, under natural light, whereby the subject and canvas are viewed side-by-side at a distance; the painter works standing to convey the impression of the whole, as opposed to a piecemeal rendering of the parts. A sight-size image by a past or contemporary master is neither static nor photographic. It manifests a freedom of brushwork that comes into focus when perceived from afar. Too often misconstrued as a mere measuring technique for accuracy, sight-size is a unique means of attaining truth to nature through individual expression. Reynolds and Gainsborough used the same procedure, but their handling of oil paint and characterization can never be confused – so, too, Velázquez and Hals, or Whistler and Sargent. Sight-size is not a stylistic convention, fashion, or manner delimited by a particular epoch; it is, instead, a visual continuum that reaches to the future and the past. For this reason, masters of different eras and origins like Velázquez, Raeburn, and Sargent can bear such a close kinship.
Charles H. Cecil (b. 1945) is an American painter, who has been based in Florence since 1978. He graduated with honors in Classics and Art History at Haverford College before further studies at Yale University. He then received four years of atelier training: the first two with R. H. Ives Gammell (1893–1981) in Boston and the following two with Gammell’s pupil Richard F. Lack (1928–2009) in Minneapolis. R. H. Ives Gammell, author of Twilight of Painting, is acknowledged to have been the pivotal figure in reviving atelier training during the past century.
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Music: Simple Sonata - Sir Cubworth
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