44 Artists Magazine May 2020
Louise B. Hafesh (LBH): Who had
the greatest influence on you as
an artist?
Richard Schmid (RS): When I was
much younger, I had some truly
gifted teachers. The most extraordi-
nary of them was William H. Mosby
at the American Academy of Art, in
Chicago. It was there that I had the
remarkable good fortune of receiv-
ing a structured classical education
in painting from him. “Bill” Mosby,
received his primary training prior
to World War II at the Belgian Royal
Academy, in Brussels, and later at
the Superior Institute, in Antwerp.
His teachers were contemporar-
ies of such luminaries as Claude
Monet, Edgar Degas, Anders Zorn,John Singer Sargent, Joaquín Sorolla, Antonio Mancini
and Valentin Serov, along with the Naturalists and the
Impressionists. The pure skill, which abounded in that
generation, was grounded on seven centuries of accumu-
lated information—knowledge that by then had reached
an astonishing level of sophistication. Mosby had direct
access to that world of art, and he generously shared what
he’d learned with me.LBH: What is your take on the cultural environment in
which you developed as an artist?
RS: My younger days were not easy times in which to
obtain a meaningful art education. The reason stemmed
from the predominance of Modern Art and its emphasis on
intuition and impulse rather than skill throughout most
of the 20th century. The definition of “art” itself had been
radically altered away from what had been considered art
before 1900. Indeed, most art before that time was largely
repudiated as naive. Instruction in highly skilled paintingMemories 1989
oil on canvas, 30x40