The system of apprenticeship in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance all but disappeared during the Modernist period. Art was viewed as a solitary activity and a pursuit of the new. However, many artists maintained that painting and life drawing skills continued to be at the center of art. Foxhall Gallery presents the art of Jacques Maroger and five artists who practice these time-honored disciplines taught by him.
 
   Jacques Maroger came to America in 1939, having left Paris and his position as technical director of the Laboratory of the Louvre. From his training as a painter under Louis Anquetin, he became familiar with the old masters' techniques and devoted his life to researching the colors of their pigments and their transparency on canvas. Maroger was best known for his rediscovery of the mediums of Jan Van Eyck and other Renaissance painters long before his research was published in 1948. He joined the faculty of the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore and insisted that his students prepare their own medium by combining and cooking oils, lead oxide and other substances as well as grinding pure colors for mixing with the medium. Using his instructions, his students began to reproduce the colors of the old masters.
 
   During the 40's and 50's, many students came under Maroger's tutelage including Frank Redelius, Joseph Sheppard and Elizabeth Byrd Mitchell. Gradually his dream of an American school of realist painters emerged. Ann Didusch Schuler became his teaching assistant and after leaving the Institute with Maroger, established the Schuler School of Fine Arts in 1959 with her husband, Hans. Committed to teaching Maroger's classical training, the school continues to this day.
 
   Foxhall Gallery presentedthis exhibition of Jacques Maroger's work along with Ann Schuler, Carol Thompson, John Sills, Dean Larson and David Good - all from the Baltimore School of Realists who use the Maroger medium and follow his methods.