Charles Cecil was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1945 and raised in
Winnetka, Illinois. He graduated from Haverford College with degrees in
art history and classical studies. After attending Yale University
Graduate School, Cecil was awarded an Elizabeth T. Greenshields
Foundation grant and used it to study with the classical realist
painters R. H. Ives Gammell in Boston and Richard F. Lack in
Minneapolis. Cecil then painted landscapes in Europe through the support
of a John F. and Anna Lee Stacey Scholarship Fund grant.
In Florence, Cecil and Daniel Graves founded Studio Cecil-Graves to
educate young painters in classical drawing and oil painting. In 1991,
Cecil established Charles H. Cecil Studios. The training methods of
Cecil can be traced back to the Old Master ateliers that flourished
throughout Europe from the Renaissance until the end of the nineteenth
century and ultimately to the treatises by Alberti, Leonardo, and Roger
de Piles. The hallmarks of Cecil’s work and the principles of his school
are a respect for aesthetic beauty and the representational arts that
have been the basis of classical and Western European culture for
millennia.
Charles H. Cecil is a distinguished portraitist, a painter of landscapes and large-scale religious works, and a sculptor. He has received numerous awards from the National Academy of Design in New York. In 1979, Cecil won the Hallgarten First Prize for oil painting, and in 1980, he won the Altman Second Prize for landscape painting. He was also featured in the 2006 exhibition “Slow Painting: A Deliberate Renaissance” at Oglethorpe University Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. In April 2008, Cecil received an award from the National Portrait Society of America for “Excellence in Art Education.” Cecil’s works are found in the permanent collections of the American Philosophical Society and Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia.
Charles H. Cecil is a distinguished portraitist, a painter of landscapes and large-scale religious works, and a sculptor. He has received numerous awards from the National Academy of Design in New York. In 1979, Cecil won the Hallgarten First Prize for oil painting, and in 1980, he won the Altman Second Prize for landscape painting. He was also featured in the 2006 exhibition “Slow Painting: A Deliberate Renaissance” at Oglethorpe University Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. In April 2008, Cecil received an award from the National Portrait Society of America for “Excellence in Art Education.” Cecil’s works are found in the permanent collections of the American Philosophical Society and Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia.
