print;
satirical print
- Museum number
- 1866,0407.121
- Title
- Object: Royal Academy
- Description
-
Below the title: 'Sommerset House London'. Students draw from a nude female model by artificial light. She stands on a low polygonal platform, gracefully posed, her raised right arm supported on a rope slung from the roof, underneath a large round reflector under which a lamp burns. Beside her is a bottle and glass. Behind the platform is a large closed stove and a high screen. The students sit on two rows of seats arranged in a horse-shoe, the second row raised above the first, resting their drawing-boards on a rail. Lamps or candles with reflectors are attached to this rail at intervals. One man (left) paints standing at a painting-table; he wears apron and oversleeves; behind him stands a man inspecting the model through a glass. Almost all the students wear powdered hair with side-curls and small pigtails; many are elderly. The room is handsome; the walls are covered with casts from the antique: busts on a shelf near the ceiling with bas-reliefs below. The drawing is realistic, the heads of the students slightly caricatured. 1801
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1801
- Dimensions
-
Height: 173 millimetres
-
Width: 251 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M.Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', VIII, 1947)
Though later, this appears to be a companion print to Rowlandson's 'Dutch Academy', BMSat 8195 (1792); the dignified propriety being in strong contrast with the ramshackle confusion of the Dutch art-school. Cf. a similar pl. (1824) by Rowlandson, with portraits of R.A.'s, in 'The English Spy', i. 411.
Grego, 'Rowlandson', ii. 216.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2001 May-Jul, Hanover, Wilhelm-Busch Museum, 'Thomas Rowlandson'
- Acquisition date
- 1866
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1866,0407.121
