FRANCESS BELL RP: MY TEACHER
“My teacher, Charles Cecil is a classicist to his core. He was trained in Boston by R.H Ives Gammel and came over to Europe, and finally Florence as a young man in the manner, I always imagined, of a 19th century fictional character seeking his fortune.
He settled in Florence and established a studio in Borgo San Frediano, and his school has trained many eminent painters over at least 40 years, who sought a classical grounding for their technique. The method he teaches is the Sight-size technique, and in our training we adhered absolutely to this grounding, with all the work one does at the studio via Sight-size, and always from life.
There are, counter intuitively, a great abundance of analogies that compare the training to more disciplined pursuits – think ballet or sport – rigour of repetition by practice, training the eye to see ever more clearly and finally delivering one to a solid understanding of proportion and handling with no reliance of outside tools. The free wheeling artistic spirit voyaging unharnessed, as so often imagined for an artistic education, it was not…this all suited me, but its not for everyone. I recognised that I would lay foundations through Charles’ training that would allow, through the restraints of the strict method, greater freedom in the long run to express my ideas. Even 20 years later I still use many of the techniques I learnt at Charles’ studio, though my painting has evolved away from the strictness of much of it.
I’m hugely grateful for the solidity that this training has provided for me as I have gone forward with my practice. It would be Charles assertion that the skill acquired at his studio should, correctly applied, be sufficient for all painterly occasions – and this ultimate attachment to his principles is part of what made him a very engaging teacher to study under. Even if one diverges from these tenets over time there can be no doubt that his charismatic style has made an emphatic start for painters who have taken a multitude of paths, and they are the richer for their time at Charles Cecil Studios.
My memories of the studio are incredibly rich for me even over 20 years later. The Florentine life of artistic emersion and bohemian charm, our long hours at work with models from all walks of life in the studio among friends I have loved ever since. The thrills and spills of being young in a beautiful city, studying and playing hard before the internet took hold and smart phones grabbed our attention. Much of this atmosphere that I remember so fondly of the studio, and of course the lessons in the practice, derived from Charles and for that I’ve always been hugely grateful.”
-Frances Bell RP
