Amitrano's School

Amitrano's School is the Paris art school at which Philip Carey tries to become a painter, and its importance lies in making artistic ambition answer to daily practice and judgment. Philip arrives eager to enter the bohemian world of the Latin Quarter; at the school, the romantic image of the artist meets the routine of drawing, instruction, and criticism. The teachers offer different standards, but it is the Friday visit of Foinet, and his verdict on Philip’s ability, that gives the school its sharpest consequence in Philip’s life.

Setting and Admission

After leaving for Paris, Philip takes a room at the Hotel des Deux Ecoles, selected for its convenience to Amitrano's School. He reaches the city thrilled by its streets and cafes, then buys drawing materials and presents himself at the school at nine the next morning. He has worried about the rough jokes a newcomer might face in an artists’ studio, but Mrs. Otter, the massiere, reassures him that the presence of many women students sets a different tone.

The studio is large and bare, its gray walls pinned with prize-winning studies. A model sits in a chair, and students gather around, some talking and others still working. The school is not simply a backdrop to Philip’s Parisian self-invention: it is where the beginner has to join a working community and submit his efforts to scrutiny.

Teaching and Artistic Standards

The school’s instruction is supplied in part by visiting masters. On Tuesdays, Michel Rollin critiques students’ work. An elderly painter and an adherent of Ingres, he dismisses the advances associated with Manet, Degas, Monet, and Sisley, yet is described as an excellent teacher, helpful, polite, and encouraging. His teaching combines an old-fashioned artistic allegiance with a humane manner toward students.

Foinet visits on Fridays and makes a striking contrast. He has achieved early success, including having pictures bought by the Luxembourg, but has spent years repeating the landscape that established his reputation. His abrasive manner and his own artistic stagnation complicate the authority he exercises in the studio: the teacher who judges students is himself presented as a painter whose career has ceased to develop.

The school’s instruction sits within a rapidly changing artistic culture. In the Latin Quarter, Impressionism has recently prevailed over older schools, and students argue over the relative standing of established masters and modern painters. Philip’s education therefore involves more than learning to draw; it places him amid disputes about what counts as progress, talent, and artistic value.

Criticism and Philip’s Artistic Crisis

Foinet’s criticism becomes personal when he confronts Fanny Price about a drawing she has worked on all week. In front of Mrs. Otter, he declares the work badly drawn and wholly unsuccessful, and tells her to tear it up. Fanny is humiliated and angry, objecting that she pays for instruction and has not received any. The scene shows the cost of the school’s critical authority: blunt judgment may claim to serve artistic improvement, but it can also wound and alienate the student who depends on it.

Later, after Philip submits work for judgment, Foinet distinguishes technical ability from artistic talent. He grants Philip manual dexterity and says that hard work could make him a careful, competent painter, but sees no talent in what Philip has shown him and predicts that he will remain mediocre. Philip answers politely and steadily, yet the judgment cuts through the hopes that brought him to Paris. It does not prove that the school alone determines his future, but it makes the gap between labor and artistic distinction impossible for him to ignore.

Artistic Formation and Significance

Philip’s development at the school is part of a wider change in his taste. He moves from astonishment at Impressionist work to emphatic admiration for Manet, Monet, and Degas, and keeps photographs of Ingres’s Odalisque and Manet’s Olympia side by side above his washing-stand. His encounters with works in the Louvre, including Rembrandt’s Disciples at Emmaus, also deepen his sense of what painting can achieve. The school belongs to this formation, even as Philip’s education extends beyond its walls and its instructors.

The school’s place in the novel is consequently double. It offers Philip access to an artistic milieu and practical training, but it also exposes him to standards that cannot guarantee recognition or success. Foinet’s verdict contributes to Philip’s eventual decision to abandon painting and study medicine. Amitrano's School marks the point at which the dream of becoming an artist is tested against the judgments of other painters—and against Philip’s own uncertain capacity.