The Royal Academy of Arts

“ They insist that their only hope of continued encouragement and support with a discerning public is in hood-winking that public, in confining their highest notions of Art to their own gross and superficial style of daubing, and in vilifying all works of standard genius.—This is right English. The English are a shop-keeping nation, and the Royal Academy are a society of hucksters in the Fine Arts, who are more tenacious of their profits as chapmen and dealers, than of the honour of the Art. ”

“ 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? ”

“ An Academy, in which the Polite Arts may be regularly cultivated, is at last opened among us by Royal munificence. This must appear an event in the highest degree interesting, not only to the artists, but to the whole nation. ”

“ When all these things are remembered, and when there is added to them239 the recollection of a presence elegant and stately, and of a manner which, though it could well keep intruders at a distance, had singular and winning charm for the many whom it was intended to please, it will be fully realised what a difficult and heavy honour awaits Lord Leighton’s successor in his great function—that of President of the Royal Academy, and official representative of English Art. The Academy contains several painters of genius; several amiable and distinguished men of the world ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Royal Society for the natural and mathematical sciences, a new Royal Society of Humanites for the historical, philological and moral sciences, the present Royal Academy for painting, sculpture, architecture and the decorative arts, and a new Royal Academy of literature and music. ”

“ It has dropped out of the Exhibition when the pictures came to be actually hung; leaving some food for pondering to those who care for the higher and completer forms of pictorial work. They may feel—and the feeling would be only enhanced by some other things they may have heard, and a great deal of what they see on the Academy walls—that an off-hand style of painting, now predominant, has interests of its own clashing with those of some graver phases of art ”

“ He wrote the lives of the most celebrated painters and sculptors of the Royal Academy, and founded in that Academy an annual prize for the students who were most successful in expressing the passions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is not that want of refinement which may be observed in many of the pictures from time to time exhibited in the Royal Academy to be attributed in a great measure to the want of education amongst artists?—It is to be attributed to [Pg 60] that, and to the necessity which artists are under of addressing a low class of spectators: an artist to live must catch the public eye. ”

“ All these things have been given of late years to art, and parents and guardians need no longer have any fear for those confided to their charge: the art of painting has been recognised as a profession! The principal institution where this profession is practised is called the Royal Academy. ”

“ More important was his introduction through the school of the Royal Academy to a circle of young men inspired by new ideas in art, by a resolve to abandon the conventionalities inherited from the eighteenth century, and to revive the detailed elaboration and mystical interpretation of nature that characterised early mediæval art. ”

“ Looking generally, and of course without mentioning any names, have you in the course of the last few years been generally satisfied with the selection of artists into the Royal Academy?—No, certainly not.
Do you think that some artists of merit have been excluded, or that artists whom you think not deserving of that honor have been elected?—More; that artists not deserving of the honor have been elected. I think it does no harm to any promising artist to be left out of the Academy, but it does harm to the public sometimes that an unpromising artist should be let into it. ”

“ No one felt this more strongly than the Prince Consort, but the opportunity of carrying out his ideas did not arise in his lifetime. The Royal Academy of Music, founded in 1822, and incorporated in 1830, did good service in its limited [Pg 392] way, for training its pupils and awarding a few scholarships; but some institution was needed, with larger expansiveness, and capable of diffusing the love and the practice of music more widely among the people. ”

“ It is a happy memory that associates the foundation of our Royal Academy with the delivery of these inaugural discourses by Sir Joshua Reynolds, on the opening of the schools, and at the first annual meetings for the distribution of its prizes. They laid down principles of art from the point of view of a man of genius who had made his power felt, and with the clear good sense which is the foundation of all work that looks upward and may hope to live. ”

“ The little boy who had begun his studies behind the plaster-cast-seller’s shop-counter in New Street, Covent Garden, was now a man of high intellect and recognised supremacy in art, to instruct students, in the character of Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy! And no man better deserved to fill that distinguished office; for none is so able to instruct others as he who, for himself and by his own efforts, has learnt to grapple with and overcome difficulties. ”

“ The establishment of the Grosvenor and the New Gallery form an interesting chapter in the history of modern art in England. It is more than probable that neither the one nor the other could have come into existence if the Royal Academy had taken a more generous and liberal view of the functions it had to discharge; but the merest glance at the history of this institution suffices to show that it has at all times adopted the narrowest interpretation of its duties and responsibilities. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1845 he published his well-known ‘Patronage of British Art,’ a work full of valuable information, in which he formulated with great ability and acrimony his charges against the academy and his demands for its reformation, and in 1851 he renewed the attack in a pamphlet entitled ‘A Glance at the Rise and Constitution of the Royal Academy of London;’ some of the changes he advocated he lived to see carried out. ”

“ French methods and technique are hammered into him so unceasingly that he departs a mere reflection of the movement of the latest school. In London there is more catholicity in art matters; originality is strongly encouraged, and the student, particularly at the Royal Academy, is given every chance to develop along individual lines. ”

“ His works are marked by taste and skill rather than by power or originality. He exhibited four works at the Royal Academy, ten at the British Institution, and nineteen at the Society of British Artists between 1835 and 1856. ”

“ The upshot, to some critics, is, in the present Academy exhibition, a sense of no little dissatisfaction, mingled with unstinted recognition of telling and well-diffused ability. One perceives that many artists can now do a good deal, if they choose; but the more sound one sees the attainments of the painter himself to be, the less one is disposed to accept with implicit faith the rather cheap outcome of those attainments. Sketches may be excellent things, and they testify to the ready availability of the artist's gifts: but sketches magnified into pictures cloy upon one. ”

“ The field of art education is large enough to be sub-divided to the advantage and welfare of all, but the Academy must be the highest school, the university of art teaching, or its school department has no reason for existence. ”

“ The one object in view was to disabuse the public mind of the erroneous impression that the Royal Academy is an unprejudiced official public body, that they elect only the best artists, and reject only the unworthy—in fact, that R.A. should be [Pg 208] considered a hall-mark on work, as too many believe it to be, to the detriment of the majority of artists. "Most of those artists who write and talk of art may be considered prejudiced—no one can well say that you are. What is the Royal Academy to you?" ”

“ The Academy is the Royal road to Art. The whole style of English Art, as issuing from this 313Academy, is founded on a principle of appeal to the personal vanity and ignorance of their sitters, and of accommodation to the lucrative pursuits of the Painter, in a sweeping attention to effect in painting, by which means he can cover so many more whole or half lengths in each season. ”

“ He always devoted his spare time to drawing and the study of anatomy, and became a student of the Royal Academy. He painted portraits and figure-pieces, and was an occasional exhibitor at the Royal Academy. ”

“ The Royal Academy of Music was formed in England, for the performance of operas composed by Mr. Handel, and conducted by him at the theatre in the Haymarket. This institution attracted extraordinary attention, and continued to flourish for a consider-able time, with great reputation. ”

“ The Royal Academy of the present moment unquestionably represents a great deal of cleverness and ability; but in the way in which everything is painted down to the level of a vulgar trivial Philistinism there is something signally depressing. And this painting down, as I call it, seems to go on without a struggle, without a protest on the part of the domesticated Muse, with a strange, smug complacency on the part of the artists. They try of course to gather a little prettiness as they go, and some of them succeed in a measure which may be appreciated ”

“ Why, in so many words, that the knowledge of Art in this country is inconsistent with the existence of the Academy, and that their success as a body of men instituted for promoting and encouraging the Fine Arts, requires the destruction or concealment of all works of Art of great and acknowledged excellence. ”

“ Millais, Leighton, Prinsep, Watts, Ward, Frith, Graves, Calderon, Sant, Alma-Tadema, and many others I might mention, it is unnecessary to say that we have here a collection of pictures of the greatest artists which this country can produce. I am glad to take this opportunity of saying that I hope those gentlemen who have come to the Royal Academy on this occasion have not forgotten to look at one picture in the next room, which I think well deserves attention. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was for some time a member of the Incorporated Society of Artists, but his exhibiting with the opposing society, which was incorporated as the Royal Academy in 1768, led to his forced withdrawal in 1765. ”