A brief history of the RA
After 250 years, there are enough to stories about the RA to fill several books – you’ll find a few of them in our shop. If you’re looking for a shorter recap, here’s a quick journey through some of our most important moments.
A company of artists
On a winter’s day in 1768, architect Sir William Chambers visited the king, George III. He brought with him a petition signed by 36 artists and architects including himself, all of whom were seeking permission to "establish a society for promoting the Arts of Design". What’s more, they also proposed an annual exhibition and a School of Design. Lucky for us, the King said yes. And so the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Academy Schools, and what you know today as the Summer Exhibition, were born. The new Royal Academicians set up shop in Pall Mall, renting a gallery that was just 30 feet long.
The first Academicians
A multicultural bunch, of the 36 founding Members, four were Italian, one was French, one Swiss and one American. Among the number were two women, Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffmann.
This is Johan Zoffany’s famous portrait of the founders, set in the Life Drawing Room of Old Somerset House. It was completed in 1772 and includes our first president Sir Joshua Reynolds, seen in a black suit left of centre. Zoffany probably hoped his painting would please the King, and he was successful: the King bought it for 500 guineas, or about £65,000 in today’s money.
Finding a home
In 1775, Sir William Chambers won the commission to design the new Somerset House. It would become, among other things, our new home and first official residence. The Exhibition Room was a thing of beauty; 32 feet high and situated at the top of a steep winding staircase, it was described by contemporary literary critic Joseph Baretti as “undoubtedly at the date, the finest gallery for displaying pictures so far built”.
In the 1830s, we moved to Trafalgar Square to share premises with the newly-founded National Gallery. However, with space at a premium, we were on the move again in 1867 to Burlington House, where we remain to this day. Fortunately, our President at the time, Francis Grant, drove a hard bargain and secured our new home for an annual rent of £1 for 999 years.
The finest gallery for displaying pictures so far built
18th-century literary critic, Joseph Baretti
An American in London
The story of our second President is a fascinating one. Benjamin West was born in Pennsylvania in 1738 and grew up in a world where art was little known. But with pioneering spirit, he travelled to Europe for his education and found early success in Rome.
Later arriving in England, he became a close friend of the King and was appointed his "History Painter". He never returned to America, but is considered the founding father of the American school of painting. He was so popular that he was elected President by his fellow members with just one opposing vote. He also had a first-rate eye for talent and once comforted a downhearted young Constable after he’d had a work rejected by the Academy with the words, “Don’t be disheartened young man, we shall hear more of you again; you must have loved nature before you could have painted this.”
Women at the RA
We have a chequered history when it comes to equality of the sexes. Although our founding members Mary Moser and Angelica Kauffman flew the flag for women in 1768, it took another 168 years before another woman was elected as a full Academician, Laura Knight in 1936.
In 1879, the Council of the day came to the conclusion that our original Instrument of Foundation did not allow for women RAs. Eventually, they relented and passed a resolution to make women eligible, but only on the condition of restricted privileges. A few years later in 1913, suffragettes occupied the galleries with a political demonstration. One woman slashed John Singer Sargent's portrait of the author Henry James, one hacked at a painting by George Clausen and another attempted to start a fire in the toilets.
The child prodigy
The beginning of the Victorian period saw us admit our youngest ever student to the RA Schools, ten-year-old John Everett Millais in 1839. He was immediately given the rather unoriginal nickname ‘The Child’.
He went on to become one of the most successful artists of the 19th century and a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The Brotherhood hoped to emulate the art of late medieval and early Renaissance Europe, characterised by intricate detail, bright colours and truth to nature. Although the movement’s activity lasted little more than five years, its influence on British art continues to this day.
In 1896, Millais was elected President of the RA, but sadly, it was doomed to be a short tenure. He was in poor health at the time, and just six months after his election he died and was buried in Painters’ Corner of St Paul’s Cathedral.
The first blockbusters
One of our founding principles was to hold an annual exhibition that anyone could enter and anyone could visit. Today, it’s called the Summer Exhibition and it has taken place every year since 1769, including during both World Wars.
From the late 19th century, we began to hold international loan exhibitions. One in particular that went down in history was our Italian Art exhibition, in 1930. The galleries were flooded with masterpieces, including Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, Raphael’s La Donna Velata and Donatello’s David – but it didn’t pass without controversy. Highly politicised, it was attended by Mussolini as a way of furthering the cause of Fascism.
Reimagining London
Our doors remained open during World War Two, just as they had during the First World War, but our President at the time, Edwin Lutyens, had some radical ideas about how London should be rebuilt after the conflict. The RA Planning Committee’s London Replanned report proposed schemes including a road bridge across the Thames that would obliterate Charing Cross Station, an enormous roundabout behind St Martin-in-the-Fields and the demolition of the existing Opera House in Covent Garden to make way for a new music and dramatic centre.
Lutyens’ ideas may have been unpopular with most, but our next President, Alfred Munnings, didn’t do much better at endearing himself to his colleagues or the public…
Famous last words
Alfred Munnings took office in 1944. He became infamous when, during one RA dinner in 1949, he drunkenly began to berate modern art and aspects of the Academy itself. After slating Picasso, he moved on to London County Council, who he criticised for exhibiting modern sculpture in Battersea Park, and the Tate for showing Matisse. To make matters worse, the whole tirade was being broadcast live by the BBC.
Munnings had already decided to resign before he made the speech – and made sure he went out with a bang.
If you paint a tree, for God’s sake try and make it look like a tree, and if you paint a sky, try and make it look like a sky.
Alfred Munnings PRA
Making new Friends
The 1970s saw a period of renewal, with the election of one of our most enterprising Presidents, Sir Hugh Casson. Casson had always been one to embrace change and in 1948, he had been appointed Director of Architecture at the Festival of Britain. Relishing the challenge, he set out to celebrate peace and modernity through working with other young architects, including 39-year-old Leslie Martin, who designed the modernist Royal Festival Hall. Casson’s role in the Festival of Britain was a huge success and he was knighted in 1952.
As President of the RA, he began our Friends of the RA membership scheme in 1977, the first of its kind in Europe. Friends come to all our exhibitions for free, enjoy all-day access to the Keeper’s House, are invited to special events and receive the RA Magazine. They’re some of our most loyal supporters; we’d be lost without them.
A new view of the RA
In 1991, we opened the Sackler Wing of Galleries, designed by Royal Academicians Norman Foster and Spencer de Grey.
With its sleek glass staircase and light-filled atrium, the Sackler Wing introduced elegant new gallery spaces to replace the Victorian Diploma Galleries. Foster himself has spoken of how the design of our Sackler Wing helped lay the groundwork for later projects, including the Great Court at the British Museum, demonstrating “a clear philosophy about how you make modern intervention in historical structures” and create “a meaningful relationship between old and new”.
Causing a sensation
If Munnings' rejection of modern art was considered controversial in the 1940s, it was nothing compared what happened when the RA embraced it in the 1990s. Drawn from the collection of Charles Saatchi, Sensation opened in September 1997 and sparked a media frenzy thanks to its inclusion of deliberately shocking works, including most famously a portrait of the murderer Myra Hindley by Marcus Harvey. In the furore that followed, several Royal Academicians resigned, but over 300,000 people came to see the show, proving the popular appeal of contemporary art.
In the following years, the resigned RAs returned (well, most of them) and many of the exhibited artists have since become RAs themselves, including Tracey Emin, Gary Hume and Jenny Saville.
The New RA
In 2001, we bought 6 Burlington Gardens, a beautiful listed building originally designed by Sir James Pennethorne RA for the University of London in the 19th century. From 2003 to 2015, we hosted exciting contemporary shows in these new galleries, showcasing the work of our Academicians from Richard Rogers to Allen Jones.
In 2008, David Chipperfield Architects were appointed to the RA250 building project. Over the next ten years, we worked towards a masterplan that would reunite Burlington House and Burlington Gardens, opening up a new spaces to exhibit art and architecture and host lectures, workshops and debates. The new RA opened on 19 May 2018, in time for our 250th anniversary later this year.
Want to know more?
Published to celebrate our 250th anniversary in 2018, A little history of the Royal Academy tells the story of the RA from its foundation to the present day. Packed with illustrations, this concise introduction to our story considers the people, places and events that have made the Academy such a prolific institution.
Explore the history of the Summer Exhibition online
In celebration of the Royal Academy's 250th birthday and coinciding with The Great Spectacle exhibition, a new open access publication by the Paul Mellon Centre looks back at 250 years of the Summer Exhibition. Explore 250 years of stories, artworks and data, alongside lively year-by-year essays and a complete set of digitised and searchable Summer Exhibition catalogues.