In the fall, the third student, Greg Mortenson, will be attending The Grand Central Academy in Manhattan, where he will study under four successful and highly qualified classical realists — Jacob Collins, Michael Grimaldi, Kate Lehman and Dan Thompson.

"Realism," said Mortenson, "has always been the style of art I've been drawn to." However, as with the other students, the art program at Utah State University didn't give him all that he wanted.

Today, university art professors routinely suggest that artists interested in the figure take illustration courses. While all three students agree the courses helped somewhat, they didn't find it entirely applicable to what they wanted to achieve.

"Even in the illustration programs," Brown said, "which tend to be more traditional, what you're really learning as a student is style."

His goal then for the future art school is ambitious: to "combine the curriculums of 19th-century French schools."

Their system, according to Brown, was set up with an academy, a technical school and the atelier, which acted as a professional working studio. "It was brilliant, and the reason they turned out the (Adolphe-William) Bouguereaus and the (Ernest) Meissoniers."

The students, according to Brown, would go to the academy in the morning, five days a week. There they would study cast-drawing, and figure-drawing and -painting. Maybe three or four days a week, they would spend the afternoon at a master's studio, moving beyond the technical, helping the masters with their work and learning how to compose a painting.

In order to create this same sort of academic environment at their school, Brown and his students will need more training. "We know what's there at the Florence Academy," said Brown, "and we know we have to complete those studies to really do what we want to do here."

They will also require something more — something that is the bane of all artists: funding for their continued education and for establishing the school. If the financing can be arranged, Brown hopes to open the school under the auspices of the Springville Museum of Art (SMA).

"We're just in the chatting phase right now," said Vern Swanson, director of the SMA. "Nothing has gone before the museum's board of trustees." But during an interview in the Springville Museum, Swanson said he is a firm believer in what Brown wants to achieve.

However, a question begs answering: Are there enough artists interested in a school emphasizing academic training to make it an economically viable undertaking in Springville, Utah?