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THE ALDINE MAGAZINE OF Biography, Bibliography, Criticism, and the Arts. THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ARTS. Kings and statesmen have thought the encouragement of their arts at home to be as much a part of their duty as the defence of their country in the field, or the maintenance of its interests in the cabinet. A taste for what is beautiful is one great step to a taste for what is good." JAMES'S" Desultory Man." LAST month, the want of space prevented us from extending our views respecting the Royal Academy of Arts-its past and present state-its government, objects, &c. We are now enabled to resume the subject • more effectively. Accident has placed before us three pamphlets, reference to which will render our task comparatively light: 1. " given a tolerably clear condensed view of the actual position of the Royal Academy, in most of its bearings, as regards the public. It well sustains and illustrates our own previous representation. For the sake of brevity, we shall adopt his words : 66 : never been called upon to support the Academy; First, then, as to its funds: the Public has A Letter to Lord John Russell, Her it receives nothing from Government, except the Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for loan of a suite of rooms. These rooms are now the Home Department, on the alleged Claim part of the National Gallery; but they belong to of the Public to be admitted gratis to the the Academy as justly as if they had been purExhibition of the Royal Academy, by Sir chased and paid for. Their original residence Martin Archer Shee, President of the Royal residence being, at the time he gave it, his Mathey received as a gift from George III.—such Academy, F. R. S.;"-2. "A Letter to Jo-jesty's private property. And when, subseseph Hume, Esq., M. P., in reply to his Aspersions on the Character and Proceedings of the Royal Academy, by Sir Martin Archer Shee, President of the Royal Academy, F. R. S., &c. ;"-3. "A Letter to Sir Martin Archer Shee, F. R. S., President of the Royal Academy of Arts, &c., on the Reform of the Royal Academy, by Edward Edwards, Esq., Hon. Secretary of the Art Union of London." All these pamphlets are, we believe, restricted to private circulation; some intimation of their contents may, therefore, be the more acceptable. From the "Advertisement" prefixed, it appears that Sir M. A. Shee's first-mentioned "Letter originated from a wish expressed by the noble Lord to whom it is addressed, that the writer would state to him the grounds on which the Royal Academy objects to admit the public gratuitously, at any period during the Exhibition.' A contemporary, following in our wake, has VOL. I. JUNE, 1839. quently, he disposed of that property to the Nation, he expressly stipulated that apartments in lieu thereof, should be fitted up for, and appropriated to, the Academy in Somerset House. Their removal from Somerset House to Trafalgar Square may have been beneficial to the members, but the transfer was also a public convenience. The apartments they formerly occupied they have resigned to the Crown. Its income is derived solely from its annual exhibitions; the sum thus collected is disbursed in payments for the maintenance of the schools, in salaries to professors, keeper, librarian, and secretary, and the necessary servants; for the delivery of lectures; for the prizes distributed every year; in maintaining a student on the continent; and, above all, in supporting decayed artists, their widows, and children-not the widows and children of members only; large sums have been distributed among those whose only had been meritorious labourers in the profession. claim upon it was that they, or their progenitors, A sum of 300,000/. has been raised by the Academy, since its foundation, from one only source its annual exhibition. For nearly half a cen 2 F tury, there was no other institution for educating artists; no other" charity" to which distressed artists could apply for relief; and both projects were largely accomplished without a call having ever been made upon the Country to assist in forwarding objects in which the country was deeply interested;-England being, we believe, the only civilized nation of the world which has never granted money from the public coffers to accomplish a purpose not deemed alone desirable, not alone honourable, but necessary; necessary to extend its fame, to improve its citizens, and to uphold its intellectual rank." Sir M. A. Shee, in his Letter to Lord John Russell, states more fully, as follows: "The Royal Academy has supported, for more than half a century, the only National School of Art in the kingdom;-a species of institution considered of so much importance in most other civilized communities as to be supported by the state. They have established professors and gratuitous lectures in the different departments of Art; they have instituted numerous prizes to excite emulation and stimulate industry; they have accumulated a valuable collection of casts, prints, and books, and provided every material and means of study necessary for cultivating the pursuits of taste; they have gratuitously educated more than seventeen hundred students, the most promising of whom have been enabled to pursue their studies in the schools of Italy, at the expense of the Academy, and the least successful of whom have been instructed in those acquirements which have qualified them to become useful agents of manufacturing improvement, when foiled in their ambition to fulfil a higher destination. These important services rendered to their country at the sacrifice of nearly three hundred thousand pounds, raised by the joint labours of artists, and disinterestedly devoted by them to public objects, must, I conceive, under any just estimate of their value, effectually turn the balance in favour of the Academy, even though they decline to endanger their property and diminish their means, by opening their doors to a promiscuous multitude, or submitting a royal establishment to the tender mercies of radical renovation!" * * * * "It is somewhat mortifying, my Lord, that the merits and services of the Royal Academy should be so little known or understood by the public, as to require to be thus explained and enumerated. It may be said, indeed, to be rather extraordinary that an institution, unsurpassed, if not unexampled, for the disinterestedness and integrity of its proceedings, should be aspersed and misrepresented unceasingly as composed of selfish monopolists and mercenary traders in taste;—that it should be assailed with asperity even in the senate, without a voice being raised in its defence amongst those from whose better feeling and better knowledge we might reasonably have expected an indignant exposure of such calumnious imputations." ** "To speak candidly, my Lord, the government may be said to be much more interested in the preservation of the Royal Academy than the members of which that body is composed. What personal or selfish advantage can those eminent artists derive from the existence of an institution whose direct object it is to raise up rivals to themselves? What motive but zeal for the advancement of the arts and the honour of their country can induce them to submit their works, already well known in the circles of taste, to the ordeal of an annual exhibition, subject to the animadversions of ignorance and malevolence, and exposed to have their supremacy contested, and their hard-earned laurels shaken, if not torn from their brow, by the vigorous grasp of rising genius? But it may be reasonably alleged that the government have some interest in the preservation of an institution which has performed for them an important duty; a duty which, unquestionably, they would long since have been required to discharge, if the zeal and patriotism of the Academy had not furnished them with an excuse for neglecting it. "This duty, my Lord, the Academy are still willing to perform without stipend or stipu lation. They are still willing to employ their time, their talents, and their funds, for the advantage of their art and their country. But if their services are not considered of sufficient importance to insure them respect, and entitle them to protection ;-if those whose office it is to watch over the great interests of the state disapprove of the manner in which the Academy perform their volunteered task;-if it be at length discovered that the affairs of art can be conducted more beneficially for the country under ministerial management, and that a fund of ten or twelve thousand pounds a-year can be appropriated for that purpose, the members of the Royal Academy will, I have no doubt, be among the first to hail the flattering prospect, and will readily surrender the privilege which they have been so long allowed to enjoy-that of supporting a National Institution at their own expense!" On the main, though absurd, question of free admission, Sir M. A. Shee thus judiciously remarks :- 66 "The property thus required to be thrown open to indiscriminate access is neither the property of the public nor of the Academy. It belongs to individuals who have intrusted it to that Institution for an express purpose. It is composed of articles particularly liable to injury; and we have no right to use it in any manner likely to endanger its preservation, or which was not in the contemplation of those who committed it to our charge. If any damage were to take place, the injury would be without redress,— the public would not indemnify the sufferer, and the Academy could not be held responsible. |