British Academy

“ We had occasion some time ago to refer to the unscrupulous critical spirit which animates a London weekly called the Academy, a periodical established and conducted on the principle of bullying itself into notice by copying and exaggerating the most arbitrary features of British journalism. A special effort has been made to push the circulation of the Academy in this country, which makes it proper to point out the policy it has adopted toward American as well as English authors. A little American book on botany was republished in London, and attacked by the Academy in the most vicious way. ”

“ A number of the men who have been more or less actively identified with it have been elected members of the Royal Academy, so that it may fairly claim to have exercised a definite influence upon the tendencies of modern art. It has certainly done much to prove the extent of the foreign influence upon the British school. ”

“ He was amongst the earliest in his dominions to encourage British art with an open hand. He was not only the founder of the Royal Academy, but a most liberal patron to artists; and he did not limit his patronage to those men alone who belonged to his own Academy. ”

“ From the great knowledge which you possess of British art, looking to the most eminent painters, sculptors, and architects at this time, should you say that the number of the Royal Academy is sufficient fully to represent them, or would you recommend an increase in the present number of Academicians?—I have not considered in what proportion the Academicianships at present exist. ”

“ According to the rules adopted, the constitution of the new Academy was to be modelled upon the British Institution. The king was announced as the principal Patron, the government was to consist of a committee of twenty-five Directors and a sub-committee of nine subscribers, and the school was to be supported by subscriptions and donations. There was also to be a Board, consisting of the Principal and four professors, and the number of pupils was not to exceed forty boys and forty girls, to be admitted between the ages of 10 and 15, and all to be boarded in the establishment. ”

“ Supported by the British government, the English artist has, free of all expense, at this truly National Academy, opportunities to sketch from life, as well as from casts, and has, moreover, access to a well-chosen library of books. With a generosity worthy of all praise, American artists are admitted to the English Academy, with full permission to share with Englishmen the advantages of the life-school, free of all cost ”

“ Membership of the school will be open to all students accredited by any university or college of Great Britain, by the authorities of the British Museum, or of the Royal Academy, or by any other institution qualified to give credentials. The director will guide the studies of the members, and exercise a general supervision over the researches undertaken by them ”

“ He began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1844, when he sent an oil painting, ‘On the Thames, near Great Marlow,’ and a drawing of ‘The Lime Kiln at Cove's End, Wooburn, Bucks.’ He continued to exhibit at the Academy until 1872; but more often his works appeared at the British Institution and the Society of British Artists, as well as at the Manchester, Liverpool, and other provincial exhibitions. His pictures, some of which are of large dimensions, illustrate every phase of nature. ”

“ He came to London and studied at the Royal Academy, gaining a silver medal in 1821. He exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy in 1821, and was a frequent exhibitor of portraits there and at the British Institution until his death. ”

“ Frederick Eaton, a series of articles on the history of the Academy in the eighteenth century to the 'Art Journal' in 1889. He also published 'Academy Lectures' in 1884, and 'Fifty Years of British Art' on the occasion of the Manchester exhibition in 1887. ”

“ It is probable that the leading English students of the humanities from the scientific side will be permitted to organize themselves into an academy, and that there will hereafter be in Great Britain a new Royal Academy as well as a Royal Society. ”

“ Nearly two years later we hear of the subject again in Green's letters. But now Mr. Macmillan was less sanguine.
'The new organization of the North British, with its wonderfully good summary of the historical literature of the quarter, and the appearance of the Academy,' Green confessed, 'certainly cut into our original plan. ... ”

“ It is, I understand and believe, pretty much the same in more modern institutions for the encouragement of the Fine Arts. The end is lost in the means: rules take place of nature and genius; cabal and bustle, and struggle for rank and precedence, supersede the study and the love of art. A Royal Academy is a kind of hospital and infirmary for the obliquities of taste and ingenuity—a receptacle where enthusiasm and originality stop and stagnate, and spread their influence no farther, instead of being a school founded for genius, or a temple built to fame. ”

“ Any attempt on the part of the master to impress his character on the [Pg 390] students would be resented by most of them, and any attempt at individuality on their part would be resented by the master, for the official art school, like the official technical school, is the resort of the incompetent. The Royal Academy goes so far as to change the visitors in its painting schools—that is, the teachers—every month, and the confusion to the student handed on from Mr. Sargent to Sir Hubert von Herkomer and then to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema can hardly be imagined. ”

“ Royal Academy of Arts, in London; was instituted in 1768 by George III. as a result of a memorial presented to him by 29 members who had seceded from "The Incorporated Society of Artists of Great Britain" (founded 1765) ; for some years received grants from the privy purse, and was provided with rooms in Somerset House; removed to Trafalgar Square in 1836, and to its present quarters at Burlington House in 1869; receives now no public grant; holds yearly exhibitions, and supports an art school; membership comprises 42 Royal Academicians, besides Associates. ”

“ What have the French Academicians done for the arts; or what will they ever do, but add intolerable affectation and grimace to centos of heads from the antique, and caricature Greek forms by putting them into opera attitudes? Nicholas Poussin is the only example on record in favour of the contrary theory, and we have already sufficiently noticed his defects. What extraordinary advances have we made in our own country in consequence of the establishment of the Royal Academy? What greater names has the English school to boast than those of Hogarth, Reynolds, and Wilson, who created it? ”

“ Anxious for the homage due to a national institution, and intolerant of any protest against its rule, it has nevertheless persistently failed to advance with the growth of new ideas of art, and has steadily declined to undertake any enlargement of the original scope of its labours. Of the more important art movements that have arisen since the date of its creation, the Royal Academy has been little more than a spectator. ”

“ Thus, on the 10th December, 1768, under the title of the Royal Academy of the Arts in London, that Institution, which has done more to excite a taste for the fine arts in this country, than any similar institution ever did in any other, was finally formed and established. ”

“ They are predominantly given, quite naturally, for political services, because they are given by politicians too absorbed to be aware of men outside the political world. In Great Britain the process is modified rather than improved by what one knows as court influence. And in spite of the real and sustained efficiency of the Royal Society in distinguishing meritorious scientific workers, the French Academy, which has long been captured by aristocratic dilettanti, and the English Royal Academy of Arts, demonstrate the essential defects and dangers of a body which fills its own gaps. ”

“ But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this we may be sure, that the present Institution will at least contribute to advance our knowledge of the Arts, and bring us nearer to that ideal excellence, which it is the lot of genius always to contemplate, and never to attain.
The principal advantage of an Academy is, that, besides furnishing able men to direct the Student, it will be a repository for the great examples of the Art. ”

“ Matthew Arnold’s plea for an English academy of letters to save his countrymen from the note of vulgarity and provinciality has met with no response. Academies have been supplanted, socially by the modern club, and intellectually by societies devoted to special branches of science. Those that survive from the past serve, like the Heralds’ College, to set an official stamp on literary and scientific merit. The principal academies of Europe, past and present, may be dealt with in various classes, according to the subjects to which they are devoted. ”

“ From that year dates the rise of a third society—the Royal Academy of Arts: an institution which has long outlived its rivals, which has indeed fed upon and gained strength from their decay and decease, as at the outset it owed its existence to the success of their previous efforts, and which, in spite of constant opposition and bitterest attack, flourishes still, as though possessed of that longevity which is proverbially the attribute of the threatened. ”

“ I think that in England, partly from the want of an Academy, partly from a national habit of intellect to which that want of an Academy is itself due, there exists too little of what I may call a public force of correct literary opinion, possessing within certain limits a clear sense of what is right and wrong, sound and unsound, and sharply recalling men of ability and learning from any flagrant misdirection of these their advantages. ”

“ If to these we add twenty-five for single persons, we get a total of two hundred for the population, which could not be far from the truth.
The Academy was raised September 18th, 1795. It was one of those tasteless buildings that afflict all new countries, and contained two school rooms below, a passage and the stairs; while the upper story was in a single room. Nothing superior to a common English education was ever taught in this house, all attempts at classical instruction failing. ”

“ For the very same culture and free inward play of thought which shows how the Corinthian style, or the whimsies about the One Primeval Language, are generated and strengthened in the absence of an Academy, shows us, too, how little any Academy, such as we should be likely to get, would cure them. Every one who knows the characteristics of our national life, and the tendencies so fully discussed in the following pages, knows exactly what an English Academy would be like. One can see the happy family in one's mind's eye as distinctly as if it were already constituted. ”

“ Your not being in favor of it results from your belief that the lay element that would be useful to the Academy does not at present exist in this country; but you think, if it did exist, and if it could be made to grow out of our schools and universities by art teaching, it might, with advantage to the Academy and to artists, be introduced into the Academy?—Yes. ”

“ Thereupon the Dilettanti Society declined to find funds for the foundation of an institute over which, when completed, they were to possess no influence whatever, in the management of which they were to be absolutely without voice; and the negotiation was accordingly brought to an abrupt conclusion. (We may note here that, curiously enough, the Royal Commission of 1863 proposed, in some degree, a reversion to this abortive project, and recommended the introduction of a lay element into the governing body of the present Royal Academy.) ”

“ Great Britain and Ireland.—- In 1616 a scheme for founding a royal academy was started by Edmund Bolton, an eminent scholar and antiquary, who in his petition to King James I., which was supported by George Villiers, marquis of Buckingham, proposed that the title of the academy should be ``King James, his Academe or College of honour.'' A list of the proposed original members is still extant, and includes the names of George Chapman, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, John Selden, Sir Kenelm Digby and Sir Henry Wotton. The constitution is of interest as reflecting the mind of the learned king. ”

“ After a very nice enquiry, they were satisfied with the account they received of an academy at the distance of about a hundred miles from London, for the good management of which they were referred to several young gentlemen, who had there received their education, and were universally admired for their learning and prudence.
The master of the academy considered all his pupils as his children; he was equally attentive to instruct them in the different branches of science, and to admonish them against those errors which young people are naturally prone to run into. ”

“ The printing press was essential to the beginnings of modern science, while at the same time it was usual for the scientific student to travel from place to place that he might learn and teach. Then in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as the cultivation of science became more general, royal academies were founded. The Royal Society was established at London in 1660 under the patronage of Charles II., the Academy of Sciences at Paris in 1666 under Louis XIV., the Royal Academy at Berlin in 1700 under Frederick I., the Imperial Academy at St. ”

“ And Dan liked what the catalogue said about the school’s purpose: “The object of the Academy is to furnish the elements of a solid education. The discipline is not adapted to boys who require severe restrictions, and the method of instruction assumes that the pupils have some power of application and a will to work. The purpose of the instructors is to lead pupils to cultivate self-control, truthfulness, a right sense of honor, and an interest in the purity of the moral atmosphere of the school.” ”