J. M. W.

Turner
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For other people named William Turner, see William Turner (disambiguation).
J. M. W. Turner

Self portrait, oil on canvas, circa 1799

23 April 1775
Born
Covent Garden, London, England
19 December 1851 (aged 76)
Died
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, London, England
Nationality English
Field Painting
Training Royal Academy of Art
Movement Romanticism

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA (23 April 1775[1]–19 December 1851) was an English
Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a
controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting
to an eminence rivalling history painting.[2] Although renowned for his oil paintings, Turner is
also one of the greatest masters of British watercolour landscape painting. He is commonly
known as "the painter of light"[3] and his work regarded as a Romantic preface to Impressionism.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Biography
• 2 Style
• 3 Legacy
• 4 Selected works
• 5 See also
• 6 Notes
• 7 Bibliography

• 8 External links
 [edit] Biography

An engraving of a sketch by Turner depicting Brougham Castle. The sketch, made during a visit
to the castle in 1809, provided the starting point for a later watercolour.

The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1839.

The shipwreck of the Minotaur, oil on canvas.

Turner was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London, England. His father, William Turner
(1738–7 August 1829), was a barber and wig maker.[4] His mother, Mary Marshall, became
increasingly mentally unstable, possibly due in part to the early death of Turner's younger sister,
Mary Ann Turner, in 1786. Mary Marshall died in 1804, after having been committed in 1799 to
St Luke's Hospital and then to the Bethlem Royal Hospital, a mental asylum otherwise known as
'Bedlam'.

Possibly due to the load placed on the family by these problems, the young Turner was sent to
stay with his maternal uncle, Joseph Mallord William Marshall, in Brentford in 1785, which was
then a small town west of London on the banks of the River Thames. It was here that he first
expressed an interest in painting. A year later he attended a school in Margate on the north-east
Kent coast. By this time he had created many drawings, which his father exhibited in his shop
window.

He entered the Royal Academy of Art schools in 1789, when he was only 14 years old,[5] and
was accepted into the academy a year later. Sir Joshua Reynolds, president of the Royal
Academy, chaired the panel that admitted him. At first Turner showed a keen interest in
architecture but was advised to continue painting by the architect Thomas Hardwick (junior). A
watercolour by Turner was accepted for the Summer Exhibition of 1790 after only one year's
study. He exhibited his first oil painting in 1796, Fishermen at Sea, and thereafter exhibited at
the academy nearly every year for the rest of his life.

Turner travelled widely in Europe, starting with France and Switzerland in 1802 and studying in
the Louvre in Paris in the same year. He also made many visits to Venice. On a visit to Lyme
Regis, in Dorset, England, he painted a stormy scene (now in the Cincinnati Art Museum).
Important support for his work also came from Walter Ramsden Fawkes, of Farnley Hall, near
Otley in Yorkshire, who became a close friend of the artist. Turner first visited Otley in 1797,
aged 22, when commissioned to paint watercolours of the area. He was so attracted to Otley and
the surrounding area that he returned to it throughout his career. The stormy backdrop of
Hannibal Crossing The Alps is reputed to have been inspired by a storm over Otley's Chevin
while Turner was staying at Farnley Hall.

Turner was also a frequent guest of George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont at Petworth
House in West Sussex and painted scenes that Egremont funded taken from the grounds of the
house and of the Sussex countryside, including a view of the Chichester Canal. Petworth House
still displays a number of paintings.

As he grew older, Turner became more eccentric. He had few close friends except for his father,
who lived with him for thirty years, eventually working as his studio assistant. His father's death
in 1829 had a profound effect on him, and thereafter he was subject to bouts of depression. He
never married, although his two daughters by Sarah Danby were born in 1801 and 1811.

He died in the house of his mistress Sophia Caroline Booth in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea on 19
December 1851. He is said to have uttered the last words "The sun is God" before expiring.[6] At
his request he was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, where he lies next to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His
last exhibition at the Royal Academy was in 1850.

The architect Philip Hardwick (1792–1870) who was a friend of Turner's and also the son of the
artist's tutor, Thomas Hardwick, was in charge of making his funeral arrangements and wrote to
those who knew Turner to tell them at the time of his death that, "I must inform you, we have
lost him." Other active executors were his cousin and executor, and chief mourner at the funeral,
Henry Harpur IV (benefactor of Westminster - now Chelsea & Westminster - Hospital), Revd.
Henry Scott Trimmer, George Jones RA and Charles Turner ARA.

[edit] Style
Turner's talent was recognised early in his life. Financial independence allowed Turner to
innovate freely; his mature work is characterised by a chromatic palette and broadly applied
atmospheric washes of paint. According to David Piper's The Illustrated History of Art, his later
pictures were called "fantastic puzzles." However, Turner was still recognised as an artistic
genius: the influential English art critic John Ruskin described Turner as the artist who could
most "stirringly and truthfully measure the moods of Nature." (Piper 321)

Suitable vehicles for Turner's imagination were to be found in the subjects of shipwrecks, fires
(such as the burning of Parliament in 1834, an event which Turner rushed to witness first-hand,
and which he transcribed in a series of watercolour sketches), natural catastrophes, and natural
phenomena such as sunlight, storm, rain, and fog. He was fascinated by the violent power of the
sea, as seen in Dawn after the Wreck (1840) and The Slave Ship (1840).

Turner's major venture into printmaking was the Liber Studiorum (Book of Studies), a set of
seventy prints that the artist worked on from 1806 to 1819. The Liber Studiorum was an
expression of his intentions for landscape art. Loosely based on Claude Lorrain's Liber Veritatis
(Book of Truth), the plates were meant to be widely disseminated, and categorised the genre into
six types: Marine, Mountainous, Pastoral, Historical, Architectural, and Elevated or Epic
Pastoral.[7] His printmaking was a major part of his output, and a whole museum is devoted to it,
the Turner Museum in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 1974 by Douglass Montrose-Graem to
house his collection of Turner prints.[8]
Turner placed human beings in many of his paintings to indicate his affection for humanity on
the one hand (note the frequent scenes of people drinking and merry-making or working in the
foreground), but its vulnerability and vulgarity amid the 'sublime' nature of the world on the
other hand. 'Sublime' here means awe-inspiring, savage grandeur, a natural world unmastered by
man, evidence of the power of God–a theme that artists and poets were exploring in this period.
The significance of light was to Turner the emanation of God's spirit and this was why he refined
the subject matter of his later paintings by leaving out solid objects and detail, concentrating on
the play of light on water, the radiance of skies and fires. Although these late paintings appear to
be 'impressionistic' and therefore a forerunner of the French school, Turner was striving for
expression of spirituality in the world, rather than responding primarily to optical phenomena.

Rain, Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway painted (1844).

His early works, such as Tintern Abbey (1795), stayed true to the traditions of English landscape.
However, in Hannibal Crossing the Alps (1812), an emphasis on the destructive power of nature
had already come into play. His distinctive style of painting, in which he used watercolour
technique with oil paints, created lightness, fluency, and ephemeral atmospheric effects. (Piper
321)

One popular story about Turner, though it likely has little basis in reality, states that he even had
himself "tied to the mast of a ship in order to experience the drama" of the elements during a
storm at sea.[9]

In his later years he used oils ever more transparently, and turned to an evocation of almost pure
light by use of shimmering colour. A prime example of his mature style can be seen in Rain,
Steam and Speed - The Great Western Railway, where the objects are barely recognizable. The
intensity of hue and interest in evanescent light not only placed Turner's work in the vanguard of
English painting, but later exerted an influence upon art in France, as well; the Impressionists,
particularly Claude Monet, carefully studied his techniques.

Chichester Canal's vivid colours may have been influenced by the eruption of Mount Tambora
in 1815.
High levels of ash in the atmosphere during 1816 the "Year Without a Summer", led to unusually
spectacular sunsets during this period, and were an inspiration for some of Turner's work.

John Ruskin says in his "Notes" on Turner in March 1878, that an early patron, Dr Thomas
Monro, the Principal Physician of Bedlam, was a significant influence on Turner's style:

His true master was Dr Monro; to the practical teaching of that first patron and the wise
simplicity of method of watercolour study, in which he was disciplined by him and
companioned by Giston, the healthy and constant development of the greater power is
primarily to be attributed; the greatness of the power itself, it is impossible to over-
estimate.

On one of his trips to Europe he met the Irish physician Robert James Graves. 'Graves was
travelling in a diligence in the Alps when a man who looked like the mate of a ship got in, sat
beside him, and soon took from his pocket a note-book across which his hand from time to time
passed with the rapidity of lightning. Graves wondered if the man was insane, he looked, saw
that the stranger had been noting the forms of clouds as they passed and that he was no common
artist. The two travelled and sketched together for months. Graves tells that Turner would outline
a scene, sit doing nothing for two or three days, then suddenly, 'perhaps on the third day he
would exclaim 'there it is', and seizing his colours work rapidly till he had noted down the
peculiar effect he wished to fix in his memory.'

Wreckers Coast of Northumberland, painted ca. 1836. Yale Center for British Art

The first American to buy a Turner painting was James Lenox of New York City, a private
collector. Lenox wished to own a Turner and in 1845 bought one unseen through an
intermediary, his friend C. R. Leslie. From among the paintings Turner had on hand and was
willing to sell for £500, Leslie selected and shipped the 1832 atmospheric seascape Staffa,
Fingal's Cave.[10] Worried about the painting's reception by Lenox, who knew Turner's work only
through his etchings, Leslie wrote Lenox that the quality of Staffa, "a most poetic picture of a
steam boat" would become apparent in time. Upon receiving the painting Lenox was baffled, and
"greatly disappointed" by what he called the painting's "indistinctness". When Leslie was forced
to relay this opinion to Turner, Turner said "You should tell Mr. Lenox that indistinctness is my
forte." Staffa, Fingal's Cave is currently owned by the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven,
Connecticut.

[edit] Legacy
J.M.W. Turner, Calais Pier

Turner left a small fortune which he hoped would be used to support what he called "decayed
artists". He planned and designed an almshouse for them at Twickenham with a gallery for some
of his works. His will was contested and in 1856, after a court battle, part of his fortune was
awarded to his first cousins including Thomas Price Turner.[11] Another portion of the money
went to the Royal Academy of Arts, which does not now use it for this purpose, though
occasionally it awards students the Turner Medal. His collection of finished paintings was
bequeathed to the British nation, and he intended that a special gallery would be built to house
them. This did not come to pass owing to a failure to agree on a site, and then to the parsimony
of British governments. Twenty-two years after his death, the British Parliament passed an Act
allowing his paintings to be lent to museums outside London, and so began the process of
scattering the pictures which Turner had wanted to be kept together. In 1910 the main part of the
Turner Bequest, which includes unfinished paintings and drawings, was rehoused in the Duveen
Turner Wing at the Tate Gallery. In 1987 a new wing of the Tate, the Clore Gallery, was opened
specifically to house the Turner bequest, though some of the most important paintings in it
remain in the National Gallery in contravention of Turner's condition that the finished pictures be
kept and shown together. Increasingly paintings are lent abroad, ignoring Turner's provision that
they be kept "constantly" in Turner's Gallery.

Turner's 1813 watercolour, Ivy Bridge

. After the Turner content was diminished and diluted in the Clore Gallery from c.2002, in 2010-
12 only two of the nine rooms on the main floor were devoted to Turner. The claim that the Tate
was fulfilling Turner's wishes was dropped in 1995, when the Charity Commission said that the
Turner Bequest had been free of Turner's conditions. This was challenged by Leolin Price QC.

A commemorative stained glass window was added to St. Mary's Church, Battersea between
1976 and 1982.[12] There are statues representing him at St Paul's Cathedral, Victoria & Albert
Museum, Royal Academy of Arts and Victoria & Albert Museum. A portrait drawing by
Cornelius Varley with his patent graphic telescope (Sheffield Museums & Galleries) was
compared with his death mask (National Portrait Gallery, London) by Kelly Freeman at Dundee
University 2009-10 to ascertain whether it really depicts Turner (www.faceofturner.com).
The Turner Society was founded by Selby Whittingham at London and Manchester in 1975.
After that endorsed the Tate Gallery's Clore Gallery wing as the solution (on the lines of the
Duveen wing of 1910), to the controversy of what should be done with the Turner Bequest,
Selby Whittingham resigned from that and founded the Independent Turner Society.

A prestigious annual art award, the Turner Prize, created in 1984, was named in Turner's honour,
and twenty years later the Winsor & Newton Turner Watercolour Award was founded.

A major exhibition, "Turner's Britain", with material (including The Fighting Temeraire) on loan
from around the globe, was held at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery from 7 November 2003
to 8 February 2004.

In 2005, Turner's The Fighting Temeraire was voted Britain's "greatest painting" in a public poll
organised by the BBC.[13]

Turner's Ovid Banished From Rome, 1838.

In October 2005 Professor Harold V. Livermore (1914-2010), its owner for 60 years, gave
Sandycombe Lodge, the villa at Twickenham which Turner designed and built for himself, to the
Sandycombe Lodge Trust to be preserved as a monument to the artist. In 2006 he additionally
gave some land to the Trust which had been part of Turner's domaine. The organisation The
Friends of Turner's House was formed in 2004 to support it.

In April 2006, Christie's New York auctioned Giudecca, La Donna Della Salute and San
Giorgio, a view of Venice exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1841, for US$35.8 million, setting
a new record for a Turner. The New York Times stated that according to two sources who had
requested anonymity the buyer was casino magnate Stephen Wynn.

In 2006, Turner's Glaucus and Scylla (1840) was returned by Kimbell Art Museum to the heirs
of John and Anna Jaffe after a Holocaust Claim was made.[14] The painting was repurchased by
the Kimbell for $5.7 million at a sale by Christie's in April 2007.[15][16]

Between 1 October 2007 and 21 September 2008, the first major exhibit of Turner's works in the
United States in over forty years came to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the
National Gallery of Art, Washington, and the Dallas Museum of Art. It included over 140
paintings, more than half of which were from the Tate.

An art gallery known as the Turner Contemporary is being built in Margate to celebrate the
association of the artist with the town.[17]

The "Turner and his painters" exhibition (Tate Britain, London, 23 September 2009 to 31
January 2010, Paris, Grand Palais, 22 February to 24 May 2010) retraces and illustrates the
development of Turner's very personal vision, through the many chance or deliberate, but always
opportune and enriching interaction that influenced his remarkable career. Nearly 100 paintings
and other graphic works (studies and engravings) from major British and American collections,
as well as the Louvre and the Prado will be on show.[18]

On July 7, 2010, Turner's final painting of Rome, “Modern Rome — Campo Vaccino”, from
1839, was bought by the J. Paul Getty Museum at a Sotheby’s auction in London for $44.9
million.

[edit] Selected works

• 1799–Warkworth Castle, Northumberland–Thunder Storm Approaching at Sun-Set, oil
on canvas–Victoria and Albert Museum, London
• 1806–The Battle of Trafalgar, as Seen from the Mizen Starboard Shrouds of the Victory,
oil on canvas–Tate Gallery, London
• 1812–Snow Storm: Hannibal and His Army Crossing the Alps, oil on canvas, Tate
Gallery, London
• 1817–Eruption of Vesuvius, oil on canvas, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT
• 1822–The Battle of Trafalgar, oil on canvas, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich,
London
• 1829–Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus, oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
• 1835–The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, oil on canvas, Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Philadelphia
• 1835–The Grand Canal, Venice, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
• 1838–The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken up, oil on canvas,
National Gallery, London
• 1839–Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino, oil on canvas, Private Collection on loan to The
National Gallery, Scotland
• 1840–Slave Ship (Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, Typhoon Coming
On), oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• 1840–Glaucus and Scylla, oil on canvas, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX
• 1840–Rockets and Blue Lights (Close at Hand) to Warn Steamboats of Shoal Water, oil
on canvas, Clark Art Museum, Williamstown, MA
• 1844–Rain, Steam and Speed–The Great Western Railway, oil on canvas, National
Gallery, London
• Date unknown–Shrimpers, Lyme Regis, oil on board, National Trust for England and
Wales, Nunnington Hall, North Yorkshire, UK

Royal Academy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about an art institution in London. For other uses, see Royal Academy
(disambiguation). For the Royal Academy of Art in the Netherlands, see Royal Academy of Art
(The Hague).
Royal Academy of Arts

Established 1768
Location Piccadilly, London W1, England
 1,267,784 (2009)[1]
Visitor figures
• Ranked 11th nationally
President Sir Nicholas Grimshaw
Public transit access Piccadilly Circus
Website www.royalacademy.org.uk

Satiric drawing of Sir William Chambers, one of the founders, trying to slay the 8-headed hydra
of the Incorporated Society of Artists

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly,
London, England. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent,
privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the
creation, enjoyment and appreciation of the visual arts through exhibitions, education and debate.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 History
• 2 Activities
• 3 Royal Academy Schools
• 4 Library, archive, and collections
o 4.1 Walls and ceilings
o 4.2 Michelangelo's Taddei Tondo
• 5 Membership
o 5.1 List of RAs
• 6 Presidents
• 7 Other posts
• 8 See also
• 9 References
• 10 Further reading

• 11 External links

[edit] History
The Royal Academy of Arts was founded through a personal act of King George III on 10
December 1768 with a mission to promote the arts of design through education and exhibition.
The motive in founding the Academy was twofold: to raise the professional status of the artist by
establishing a sound system of training and expert judgment in the arts and to arrange the
exhibition of contemporary works of art attaining an appropriate standard of excellence. Behind
this concept was the desire to foster a national school of art and to encourage appreciation and
interest in the public based on recognised canons of good taste.

Fashionable taste in 18th century Britain centered on continental and traditional art forms
providing contemporary artists little opportunity to sell their works. From 1746 the Foundling
Hospital, through the efforts of William Hogarth, provided an early venue for contemporary
artists to show their work in Britain. The success of this venture led to the formation of the
Society of Artists and the Free Society of Artists. Both these groups were primarily exhibiting
societies and their initial success was marred by internal fractions amongst the artists. The
combined vision of education and exhibition to establish a national school of art set the Royal
Academy apart from the other exhibiting societies. It provided the foundation upon which the
Royal Academy came to dominate the art scene of the 18th and 19th centuries supplanting the
earlier art societies.

Sir William Chambers used his connections with King George III to gain royal patronage and
financial support of the Academy and the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds was made its first
President.

The Instrument of Foundation of the Royal Academy signed by King George III on 10 December
1768 named 34 Founder Members and allowed for a total membership of 40. The Founder
Members were Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, Thomas Sandby, Francis Cotes, John
Baker, Mason Chamberlin, John Gwynn, Thomas Gainsborough, Giovanni Battista Cipriani,
Jeremiah Meyer, Francis Milner Newton, Paul Sandby, Francesco Bartolozzi, Charles Catton,
Nathaniel Hone the Elder, William Tyler, Nathaniel Dance, Richard Wilson (painter), George
Michael Moser, Samuel Wale, Peter Toms, Angelica Kauffman, Richard Yeo, Mary Moser,
William Chambers, Joseph Wilton, George Barret, Edward Penny, Augustino Carlini, Francis
Hayman, Dominic Serres, John Richards, Francesco Zuccarelli, George Dance. William Hoare
and Johann Zoffany were added to this list later by the King and are known as Nominated
Members. Amongst the Founder Members were two women, a father and daughter and two sets
of brothers.

The Royal Academy was initially housed in cramped quarters in Pall Mall although in 1771 it
was accorded temporary accommodation for its Library and Schools in Old Somerset House,
then a royal palace. In 1780 it was installed in purpose-built apartments on the Strand front of
New Somerset House, which had been designed by Sir William Chambers, the Academy's first
treasurer. The Academy moved in 1837 to Trafalgar Square, where it occupied the east wing of
the recently completed National Gallery (designed by another Academician, William Wilkins).
These premises soon proved too small to house both institutions and in 1868, 100 years after the
Academy's foundation, it moved to Burlington House, Piccadilly, where it is to this day.

The first Royal Academy exhibition of contemporary art, open to all artists, was held on 25 April
1769 and ran through until 27 May 1769. 136 works of art were shown and this exhibition, now
known as the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, has been staged annually without interruption
to the present day. In 1870 The Royal Academy expanded its exhibition program to include a
temporary annual loan exhibition of Old Masters' following the cessation of a similar annual
exhibition of Old Masters' held by the British Institution. The range and frequency of these loan
exhibitions has grown enormously since that time making the Royal Academy a leading art
exhibition institution of international importance.

[edit] Activities
The Royal Academy does not receive financial support from the state or crown. Its income is
derived from exhibitions, trust and endowment funds, receipts from its trading activities and
from the subscriptions of its Friends and Corporate Members. Much of the cost of its activities is
met by sponsorship from commercial and industrial companies, in which the Academy was one
of the pioneers. The Academy thus depends upon a wide range of support from the private sector
for the accomplishment of its artistic aims.

One of its principal sources of revenue is hosting a programme of temporary loan exhibitions.
These are of the highest quality, comparable to those at the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery
and leading art galleries outside the United Kingdom. In 2004 the highlights of the Academy's
permanent collection went on display in the newly restored reception rooms of the original
section of Burlington House, which are now known as the "John Madejski Fine Rooms".

Under the direction of the former Exhibitions Secretary Norman Rosenthal the Academy has
hosted ambitious exhibitions of contemporary art including in 1997 "Sensation" the collection of
work by Young British Artists owned by Charles Saatchi. The show created controversy for
including a portrait of Myra Hindley by Marcus Harvey that was vandalised while on display.

An early Summer Exhibition at the Academy's original home in Somerset House.

The Academy also hosts an annual Royal Academy summer exhibition of new art, which is a
well known event on the London social calendar. It is not as fashionable as was the case in
earlier centuries, and has been largely ignored by the trendy Brit Artists and their patrons;
however Tracey Emin exhibited in the 2005 show. In March 2007 this relationship developed
further when Tracey Emin accepted the Academy's invitation to become a Royal Academician,
commenting in her weekly newspaper column that, "It doesn't mean that I have become more
conformist; it means that the Royal Academy has become more open, which is healthy and
brilliant."[2]

Anyone who wishes may submit pictures for inclusion in the summer exhibition and those
selected are displayed alongside the works of the Academicians. Many of the works are available
for purchase.

The Friends of the Royal Academy is a charity founded by Sir Hugh Casson in 1977 to provide
financial support for the Royal Academy and allow supporters unlimited access to the exhibition
programme. Members of the public can join the Friends of the RA for £70 a year and receive
many benefits such as unlimited entry to exhibitions with a family adult guest and up to four
family children, use of the exclusive Friends Rooms, and the quarterly RA Magazine. Over the
years the Friends scheme has grown in size and importance and in 2007 celebrated its thirtieth
anniversary with almost 90,000 Friends.
In 2004 the Academy attracted press and media attention for a series of financial scandals and
reports of a feud between Rosenthal and other senior staff that resulted in the cancellation of
what would have been profitable exhibitions.[3] In 2006, it attracted further press by erroneously
placing only the support for a sculpture on display in the belief that it was the sculpture, and then
justifying it being kept on display.[4]

In September 2007 Charles Saumarez Smith became secretary and chief executive of the Royal
Academy, a newly created post.[5]

The Academy has received many gifts and bequests of objects and money. Many of these gifts
were used to establish Trust Funds to support the work of the Royal Academy Schools by
providing "Premiums" to students displaying excellence in various artistic genre. The rapid
changes that pulsed through 20th century art have left some of the older prize funds looking
somewhat anachronistic. But efforts are still made to award each prize to a student producing
work that bears a relation to the intentions of the original benefactor.

[edit] Royal Academy Schools

The Royal Academy at Burlington House

The Royal Academy Schools is the oldest art school in the country and still offers the only 3 year
postgraduate art course to its students.

The Royal Academy Schools was the first institution to provide professional training for artists
in Britain. The Schools' programme of formal training was originally modeled upon that of the
French Académie de peinture et de sculpture, founded by Louis XIV in 1648, and shaped by the
precepts laid down by Sir Joshua Reynolds. In his fifteen Discourses delivered to pupils in the
Schools between 1769 and 1790, Reynolds stressed the importance of copying the Old Masters,
and of drawing from casts after the Antique and from the life model. He argued that such a
training would form artists capable of creating works of high moral and artistic worth.
Professorial chairs were founded in Chemistry, Anatomy, Ancient History and Ancient
Literature, the latter two being held initially by Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith.

In 1769, the first year of its existence, 77 students were enrolled into the Schools. By 1830 over
1,500 students had enrolled in the Schools giving an average intake of 25 students each year.
They included men such as John Flaxman, J. M. W. Turner, Sir John Soane, Thomas
Rowlandson, William Blake, Sir Thomas Lawrence, John Constable, David Wilkie, William Etty
and Sir Edwin Landseer. The term of studentship was at first six years. This was increased to
seven years in 1792 and to ten in 1800 and it remained at ten till 1853. These figures must be
regarded, how¬ever, only as years of eligibility. Undoubtedly many of the students did not
complete their full term but there are no details of attendances at this early date or any record of
the termination of studentships.
Teaching in the Royal Academy Schools was undertaken by a system of lectures delivered by
Professors and Royal Academician 'Visitors'. Royal Academicians were elected as Visitors and
served in rotation for nine months of the year. Each Visitor attended for a month, setting the
models and examining and instructing the performances of the students. This system lasted
through into the late 1920s when Visitors were replaced by permanent teachers.

The first woman to enrol as a student of the Schools was Laura Herford in 1860. Three more
women enrolled in 1861 with a further three in 1862.

The Royal Academy has always provided free tuition to all its student. Tuition is given by
practising artists, many of the them Members of the Royal Academy, under the direction of the
Keeper.

Today some 60 students study in the Schools on a three-year postgraduate course. The program
is focused on studio-based practice across all fine art media. The studios accommodate a wide
variety of disciplines, including painting, sculpture, print, installation and time-based and digital
media. Selection of candidates is based upon evidence of individual ability and commitment,
with an emphasis on potential for further development across the three-year tenure of the course.
Students are given the opportunity twice each year to show their work in the Royal Academy.

[edit] Library, archive, and collections

The Royal Academy has an important collection of books, archives and works of art accessible
for research and display. A large part of these collections have been digitised and can be
investigated through the Collection website. See External Links below.

The first president of the Royal Academy, Sir Joshua Reynolds, laid the foundation of the Royal
Academy collection with the gift of his famous Self-portrait. This was followed by gifts from
other artists who founded the Academy, such as Gainsborough and Benjamin West.
Subsequently each elected Member was required to donate an artwork (known as a Diploma
Work) typical of their artistic output, and this practice continues today. These Diploma Works
include sculpture by John Flaxman, Hamo Thornycroft and Phillip King and paintings by J. M.
W. Turner, John Constable, Lawrence Alma-Tadema and David Hockney. Additional donations
and purchases have resulted in a collection of approximately a thousand paintings and a thousand
sculptures showing the linear development of a British School of art.

Works of art held also include significant collections of drawings and sketchbooks by British
artists working from the mid-18th century, a large collection of engravings after the Old Masters,
reproductive prints after all the leading British artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and a
growing collection of original prints by current Members of the Academy including Sir Eduardo
Paolozzi, Tom Phillips, Jennifer Dickson and Norman Ackroyd.

The Library of the Royal Academy is the oldest institutional fine art library in Britain. For over
200 years it has served the needs of students and teachers in the Academy Schools and provided
an important source for the history of British art and architecture. The Library contains some
65,000 books, including an Historic Book Collection of approximately 12,000 volumes, acquired
before 1920, reflecting the early teaching philosophy of the Academy Schools.

The Archive forms one of the world’s most significant resources for the historical study of
British art since 1768. It documents the activities of an institution that became a national arbiter
of taste throughout the 19th century, acting as the primary venue for the exhibition of
contemporary art and continuing to this day to run the oldest school of fine art in the country.
The Photographic Collection consists of 19th and 20th century photographs of Academicians,
landscapes, architecture and works of art. Holdings include early portraits by William Lake Price
dating from the 1850s, portraits by David Wilkie Wynfield and Eadweard Muybridge's Animal
Locomotion: An Electrophotographic investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movement
1872–1885. In addition, there are over 55,000 photographs relating to the history of the
Academy, from views of exhibition installations to images of the Academy's homes and its staff.

[edit] Walls and ceilings

Amongst the paintings decorating the walls and ceilings of the building are those of Benjamin
West and Angelica Kauffman, in the entrance hall (Hutchison 1968, p. 153), moved from the
previous building at Somerset House. In the centre is West's roundel The Graces unveiling
Nature c. 1779, [6] surrounded by panels depicting the elements, Fire, Water, Air and Earth. [7] At
each end are mounted two of Kauffman's circular paintings, Composition and Design at the West
end, and Painting or Colour and Genius or Invention at the East end. [8]

[edit] Michelangelo's Taddei Tondo

The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John

Main article: Taddei Tondo

The most prized possession of the Academy’s collection is Michelangelo's Taddei Tondo, left to
the Academy by Sir George Beaumont. The Tondo is on display in a purpose-built area on the
Sackler Wing gallery level. Carved in Florence in 1504–06, it is the only marble by
Michelangelo in the United Kingdom and represents the Virgin Mary and Child with the infant
St John the Baptist.

[edit] Membership
Membership of the Royal Academy is made up of up to 80 practising artists, each elected by
ballot of the General Assembly of the Royal Academy, and known individually as Royal
Academicians (R.A.). The Royal Academy is governed by these Royal Academicians.

The 1768, the Instrument of Foundation allowed total membership of the Royal Academy to be
40 artists. In 1853 membership was increased to 42 allowing Engravers to become members for
the first time. The number of Royal Academicians was increased once again in 1972 to 50 and
finally, in 1991, the maximum limit was set at 80 members. All Academicians must be
professionally active, either wholly or partly, in the United Kingdom. Of the 80 Academicians,
there must always be at least 14 sculptors, 12 architects and 8 printmakers with the balance being
drawn from the painters category.
The category of Associate Member of the Royal Academy (A.R.A.) was introduced in 1769 to
provide a means of pre-selecting suitable candidates to fill future vacancies among
Academicians. Associate membership was abolished in 1991.

In 1918 it was decided that all Academicians and Associates on reaching the age of 75 become
members of a Senior Order of Academicians so creating a vacancy in the other categories of
membership. A senior member is effectively retired from the day to day government of the
Academy but retains all other membership privileges.

All RAs are entitled to exhibit up to six works in the annual Summer Exhibition. They also have
the opportunity to exhibit their work in small exhibitions held in the Friends' Room and are
occasionally invited to hold major exhibitions in the Sackler Galleries. Many Academicians are
involved in teaching in the Schools and giving lectures as part of the Royal Academy Education
Programme.