Charles Cecil (Charles H. Cecil / Charles Harkness Cecil):  Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1945, Charles H. Cecil was raised in Winnetka Illinois. He attended Haverford College in Pennsylvania and graduated with degrees in art history and the classics.

Cecil was awarded an NDEA grant to continue his studies of art history at Yale.  Following graduate study, Cecil was awarded the coveted Greenshields Foundation grant and studied with R.H. Ives Gammell at his Fenway Studio in Boston, and then with Richard Frederick Lack at Atelier Lack in Minneapolis.

A fellowship from the Stacey Foundation afforded him the opportunity to paint landscapes in Europe. Cecil first traveled to Italian hill towns during summers to paint, and then moved to Florence permanently.  He has twice received major awards at the National Academy of Design in New York: The Hallgarten Prize for oil painting and the Altman Prize for landscape.

In Florence, Cecil collaborated with fellow realist Daniel Graves to found Studio Cecil-Graves, for the education of young painters in historic traditional drawing and oil painting methods.  

Studio Cecil-Graves was a small, intimate atelier program where the two painters taught a select handful of passionate students who shared a frustration at the lack of pragmatic, hands on training of techniques and methods of painting and drawing. 

During 1991, the two artists parted ways and Charles Cecil remained at the original studio, establishing his own Atelier:  Charles H. Cecil Studios, a School of Art in the Naturalist Tradition.

Cecil's figurative paintings are represented in numerous international collections, including the American Philosophical Society and Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. He is listed in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in American Art..

An avid Art Historian and captivating speaker, Charles Cecil has served as a popular lecturer at The British Institute of Florence.

Link from Ann Long Gallery: Travel &  Leisure Magazine Article: Master Class

GottliebStudios.com/Classical_Glossary

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