A visit to London – the Royal Academy

This institution used to be at Somerset House, in the block to the right of the Strand entrance. Sir William Chambers, who was the first treasurer of the Academy, designed this part of his great building specially for the Academy. Here the exhibitions were held till the removal to Burlington House in 1873.

The plate in the Exhibition room is mostly Rowlandson’s work, for he not only drew the figures but sketched the canvasses massed on the walls. He does not seem to have represented the exhibition of any particular year, but he does convey exactly the character of the Royal academy show of the time, with its mixture of large and expressively historical pictures, its flattering portraits and the smaller and more engaging genre pictures and  beautiful landscapes.

It is amusing to study his drawing alongside an Academy catalogue of tis time. Larger and thinner than the catalogs of today, it is more tastefully printed, a fraction of the price, but identical in arrangement, starting with a classical quotation and ending with a list of the exhibitors addresses. The distinguished names are Benjamin West (the former president), Hoppner, Lawrence, Opie, Zoffany, Wilkie and Turner to tell only some of them, and it is possible to make shrewd guess at which pictures are whose in Rowlandson’s drawing. One of the full length portraits will be by Opie, another by Lawrence. Of the large pictures at least one will be by West, based probably on a biblical text. There will be a Turner landscape, and a picture of rustic life by Wilkie. It were Wilkie and Turner who attracted visitors more surely. When Wilkie’s Blind Fiddler was shown in 1807 Turner painted up his own Blacksmiths shop at the last moment with the mischievous intention of  putting Wilkie in the shade.

The landscapes might include one or two rich paintings by Constable, not much noticed by the ordinary visitor, while among the small pictures would be a variety of subjects, by all sorts of artists, professional and amateur, ranging from a Norfolk Squires favorite hunter to a braziers shop in Calcutta. In a very modest corner might be found an architectural drawing by Mr. Pugin himself.

One important aspect of the exhibition Rowalndson does not bring out – the war pictures. Every academy after Trafalgar year bristled with Nleson pictures: portraits, busts, designs of memorials, paintings of Nelson in this or that naval situation, pictures of his ships and his officers. More recent naval events, too, were regularly recorded by exhibitors at the academy, often with elaborate notes in the catalog explaining the exact moment in the encounter which the picture was supposed to represent.

Rowlandson’s crowd in this plate is a good one, and shows us that, the academy crowd does not change much. The elder lady on the left obviously knows what she likes and is offensive about what she does’ nt. The bishop is here because it is the proper thing for bishops  to be seen at the Academy. There soldiers are here to show off their uniforms and their comment on the war pictures. You can see all these people today and Rowlandson would feel quite at home in Burlington house.

Nor has the standard of painting changed a lot. From its foundation in 1768 the Academy has encouraged competence and opposed innovation. At the academy the accomplished amateur and the accepted professional meet on well proven ground. So it is today, and so was it when Pugin and Rowlandson made their plate of the Microcosm.