How did SMFA Begin? 

It might sound like an artist’s dream to live in a city that offers free drawing classes to every single one of its residents, but in Boston in 1870, that was the reality and it ultimately led to the founding of SMFA. 

In 1870, the Massachusetts State Legislature passed the Drawing Act, which not only stated the value of arts education and instruction in public schools, but as a right of the Commonwealth’s citizens. It officially stated, “Any city or town may, and every city or town having more than ten thousand inhabitants shall annually make provision for giving free instruction in industrial or mechanical drawing to persons over fifteen years of age, either in day or evening schools, under the direction of the school committee.” 

The Drawing Act represented the government’s earnest push against cheap machine-made goods flooding the market and forcing local craftspeople, makers, and artists to shutter their businesses due to a drop in commissions. 

Boston had always been known as a design city–beginning with its legacy as the home of Paul Revere’s silversmith shop and the famous engraving shop where John Singleton Copley began his career as an apprentice before becoming a preeminent painter of the 19th century. 

With the Drawing Act, the city of Boston hoped to spark a renaissance. By offering young people exposure to the arts and a pathway to pursue professional careers in art and design, Boston could reclaim this market once again and the sector could thrive. 

That same year, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston was established on the top floor of the Boston Athenaeum, America’s oldest private library and an intellectual hub for the city’s cultured “Brahmins”, the social and economic elite of Boston in the 1800s. The Athenaeum served as the museum’s headquarters until it formally opened its doors to the public in a Gothic revival building that was “all the rage” in Copley Square in 1876. 

At its debut, the museum announced that part of its mission was to offer instruction in the arts and to open a school that would not only fulfill the goals of the Drawing Act, but would also educate the next generation of artists and designers. 

Just six months later, The School of Drawing and Painting (which later changed its name to the School of Museum of Fine Arts) opened in the basement of the MFA. Classes officially began for the school’s first 80 students on January 2, during the historic Blizzard of 1877. 

The painter Emil Otto Grundmann relocated from Germany specifically to serve as the school’s first director. He grounded the curriculum in principles of light, color, and figurative work from his studies in Dresden and Antwerp. From the beginning, the school was co-educational, attracting both men and women to its studios. Initially, the class offering included drawing, painting, and perspective instruction, with anatomy courses introduced the following year. Soon, Grundmann was joined by other (all male) arts luminaries of the era, including the painter Francis David Millet and Edwin Graves Champney, a native of Woburn, Massachusetts, who had studied painting in Europe and became fast friends and colleagues with Grundmann. 

In the school’s first chapter, the MFA largely governed the school’s finances and its pedagogy through the Permanent Committee, which initially included MFA President Martin Brimmer, second Trustee and Honorary Director, Charles C. Perkins, and the museum’s first Director General Charles G. Loring. 

Initially, there were no grades or age limits for students, though tuition was charged, making the school accessible only to those who had the privilege to afford it. Much would change over the coming 150 years but the mission of the school–to provide an exceptional education in the arts–would only strengthen over time.

Image: Scrapbook 1, 1878 - circa 1900. UA133.001748. School of the Museum of Fine Arts records, UA133, Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC), Medford MA.