I know my painting lineage better than my own family tree. Frank Vincent DuMond started painting with Sartain and Beckwith at the Art Students League in New York in the 1880's and then went to Paris, as was customary at the time, where he studied with Lefebvre, Constant and Boulanger at the Academie Julian. Shortly after returning to America he began teaching at the League, at the age of 27, and continued as an instructor there for most of the next 59 years. Frank Herbert Mason enrolled in DuMond's class at the age of 16 and continued to study with him for the next dozen years or so. One day while they were sitting together in the League's cafeteria DuMond asked Mason when he was going to start teaching. Mason replied that he wanted to paint and had not thought about teaching. DuMond let Mason know that he didn't expect him to keep everything he had been taught to himself. When DuMond died in 1951 Mason took over the class. He was, like his mentor, a young man when he began to teach and would have a long tenure as a League instructor. Frank had been teaching for over 20 years when I arrived at the League in 1974 and, after a few months of studying anatomy and drawing with Robert Beverly Hale, I became a Mason student. As Frank began his 57th season at the League he realized his health was not up to the challenge. I had substituted for him for a day or two over the past few years but this time he asked me to teach the class for a few months while he recovered his strength. So I returned to my old classroom, this time as the instructor. As the weeks wore on it became clear that he would not be going back and he informed the League's director that he was retiring. I was soon asked to stay on and became the 3rd instructor to teach the afternoon class in Studio 7 at the Art Students League in the last 116 years. I'd had over 20 years to work on my painting but now it was my turn to pass on what I'd been taught. I suppose 50 some years from now an artist will write a blog post about how they studied with someone who studied with Torak, who studied with Mason, who studied with DuMond.....