Daniel Graves graduated cum laude from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1972, where he was influenced by Frank Russell's course in Intensive Realism based on the development of close observation skills.  He studied anatomy and painting with Joseph Sheppard, who had spent a number of years studying in Europe and was the first to introduce Graves to the work of Pietro Annigoni. 

Inspired by Sheppard, Graves decided to pursue graduate study in Italy, where he focused on etching and history painting with Richard Serrin at the Villa Schifanoia Graduate School of Fine Art (Rosary College) in Florence.  He returned to the US and studied for a year with Richard Frederick Lack at Atelier Lack in Minnesota, where he learned the sight-size method and taught etching.  Graves returned to Florence where he met and came to know Pietro Annigoni, who heavily influenced his work.  He enrolled at the atelier of Annigoni's colleague, Nerina (Nera) Simi -- Studio Nera Simi.

"While studying in Florence, Graves became particularly sensitive to the fact that what is passed on from teacher to student is a language that has evolved through the centuries, something impossible to transmit except by visual example."  He recognized a shared frustration, common among students who were unable to find solid training, and began teaching in Florence in 1984.

Along with fellow realist Charles H. Cecil, who had studied under R. H. Ives Gammell at his Fenway Studios in Boston, and at Atelier Lack in Minneapolis, Daniel Graves co-founded Studio Cecil-Graves for the education of young painters in classical drawing and oil painting. 

Former students of Studio Cecil-Graves report that it was a small, intimate atelier program where the two painters alone, 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. 

In 1991, Graves left Studio Cecil-Graves to found the Florence Academy of Art. Charles Cecil retained the original atelier and it was renamed Charles H. Cecil Studios, A School of Art in the Naturalist Tradition. 

Graves mission statement has remained the same;  to establish “…a return to discipline in art, to timeless classical canons, and to the study of nature as the foundation for great painting.”

The FAA's program of study is based on the principle that through the intense observation of nature, the study of the old masters, and the use of traditional techniques, students will develop considerable powers of draftsmanship.

Graves has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe and the United States, and his portraits, interiors, still lifes, and etchings are part of private and public collections worldwide. During 2003, twenty-six current and former students and teachers of the Florence Academy of Art, including Graves, were featured in the exhibition Realism Revisited, presented at the Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen, Germany.  The exhibition representing select painters and sculptors from the original museum presentation and including new works was later presented at Hirschl & Adler Galleries in New York, Century Gallery in Alexandria, Virginia and Andreeva Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  

"Painting is in part intellectual, but it has a great deal to do with one’s passion, with what they feel and what they love.”  Daniel Graves

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