One Fine-Arts Academy Where the Old Masters Still Hold Sway

In sculpture class, the art students stand in front of wooden pedestals delicately molding the features of human faces in wet clay.

The busts are remarkably lifelike. Two eyes, a nose and a mouth--all where they should be--and expressions that make the faces look like real people, not department-store dummies.

Light streams down from huge skylights. Below, students work under the tutelage of an instructor who offers quiet advice and encouragement as he strides across the studio floor inspecting their work.

Welcome to the Schuler School of Fine Arts, where the traditions of the old masters are carried on as they were centuries ago, with barely a nod to fashion or the triumph of 20th century modernism.

“This is a school where we all think the same,” said Ann Didusch Schuler, who founded the school with her husband, Hans Schuler Jr., more than 40 years ago.

The couple previously taught for many years at the Maryland Institute, College of Art, where Hans Schuler Jr.’s father, Hans Schuler Sr., also taught and served as director from 1925 to 1951.

The Schulers pride themselves on being from a long line of German artists and artisans spanning at least six generations in Europe and the United States. Ann’s family, the Didusches, also had an illustrious history as artists in Germany.

But by the late 1950s, fashions in art and art education were changing. The formal traditions in which the Schulers had been trained--drawing, anatomy, perspective--increasingly were called into question by a younger generation enthralled by modernist abstraction.

“We were just heartbroken to see it all go,” Ann Schuler recalled. “They only wanted us to work with the abstract, not with the tradition we had been trained in. So we decided to start our own school.”

In 1959, Schuler and her husband started teaching in a house that once served as Hans Schuler Sr.’s studio, at 5 E. Lafayette St. The elder Schuler built it in 1906, and in 1912 he built a house adjoining the studio for his family home. The first Schuler School students attended classes in those buildings, and the school has remained in the Lafayette Street location ever since.

Today Ann Schuler, 82, is the white-haired doyenne of the classical-realist style in Baltimore and head of an unusual art school that is still very much a family affair.

Although Hans Schuler Jr., a painter and sculptor, died last year, the couple’s daughter, Francesca Schuler Guerin, teaches sculpture at the school; their grandson, Andrew Schuler Guerin, teaches painting; and Schuler’s nephew, Fritz Schuler Briggs, teaches drawing and watercolor.

None of the Schulers seems particularly concerned that his or her style of art is out of step with the world of contemporary art museums, dealers and collectors.

“Just think that for thousands of years we’ve had representational art and that for this tiny blip of time we’ve had abstract art,” Francesca said. “You have to wonder whether it will last. We’re going to do what we’re going to do. I never try to figure out what the market wants, because that’s useless.”

These days, Ann Schuler spends most of her time teaching portrait painting, a genre she mastered as a young woman and has practiced for decades.

“Anyone who wants to be an artist should have the basic skills,” she said.

Currently the Schuler School has about 17 full-time students, most of them from the Baltimore-Washington area. Tuition for the year costs $3,400, which is comparable to the cost of community college and less than a fifth of the $18,460 annual tuition at Maryland Institute, College of Art. The Schuler School offers a four-year program of study, but it is not accredited by the state of Maryland and cannot confer academic degrees on its graduates.

James Eichelberger, 25, a first-year student, said he enrolled on the advice of his former art teacher.

“I was painting and dabbling in sculpture,” Eichelberger said. “My teacher, Robert Brown, was a former student of Ann Schuler’s at [Maryland Institute, College of Art]. He said if I really wanted to advance my knowledge of how to see forms and train my eye, I should study with the Schulers.”

Students at the school follow a rigorous course of study designed to sharpen their skills. On Mondays, they take classes in sculpture and watercolor. Tuesday features oil painting and life drawing. Wednesday mornings are given over to drawing from casts, then sculpture again in the afternoon. Thursday is oil-painting and life-drawing day, and Friday is anatomy in the morning and life drawing in the afternoon.

“It’s a wide range of experience, but everybody goes at their own pace,” said Eichelberger, who insisted that he is not troubled by the fact that the school doesn’t offer a degree. “If what you want personally is to improve your skills, it’s a pretty good place,” he said.

There’s a lively debate among Baltimore art lovers over the importance of what the Schulers are doing. Some dismiss the style as mere decoration, while others praise the training the school offers.

Constantine Grimaldis, owner of C. Grimaldis Gallery, concedes there is a place for the Schulers’ style of art-making, although it’s not to his taste.

“There are venues that deal with that kind of art, but obviously those that deal with contemporary work have nothing much to offer these artists,” Grimaldis said.

On the other hand, Walter Gomez, owner of Gomez Gallery, said the school fills an important niche.

“A school like that is very important because it focuses on the technical side of painting,” Gomez said. “They are about structuring their images in a classical way, so it looks like classical work. But what you end up with is all this structure to play with. That’s very different from many schools, where you’re sort of thrown in and expected to figure it all out yourself. There they are taught the thought processes as well as the technical skills, and that’s always valuable.”

Bill Steinmetz, a former faculty member at Maryland Institute, College of Art, who taught design there for 20 years and now serves on its board of trustees, said the Schulers, and Ann Schuler in particular, have been an important influence on many Baltimore artists who have gone on to highly successful careers.

“What they offer is a fine-arts curriculum based on the technique taught by Jacques Maroger, who was Ann Schuler’s teacher back in the 1940s,” Steinmetz said. “It’s a technique that allows for lots of glazing and mysterious buildups of color, and it’s really quite amazing if you have a good drawer or painter who has the talent and control to use it.”

Asked whether the Old Master style was still relevant at the turn of the millennium, Steinmetz laughed.

“Oh my, all art is important,” he said. “After all, everyone should be able to express themselves, and it might just help make someone else look at things in a different way.”