Supporting the Spectacle: The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and its Spin-Offs

Supporting the Spectacle The Summer Exhibition and its Spin-Offs 29 May – 21 September 2018 1

Introduction

This display uses 23 objects from the PMC Library’s substantial collection of catalogues, journals and ephemera, to explore the varied kinds of publication that have been prompted by the RA’s Annual Exhibition, which is now generally known as the Summer Exhibition.

This annual display of contemporary art, produced both by members of the Academy and by a great swathe of other professional and amateur artists, is one of the great fixtures of the British art calendar. It has been mounted every single year since 1769, and at a succession of venues - today, as has been the case since 1869, it takes place at Burlington House. It features crowded displays of paintings, prints, drawings, models and sculptures, and has attracted millions of visitors over its history. Furthermore, as this far more modest display makes clear, the Exhibition has generated a rich variety of publications.

As well as showcasing the Academy’s own exhibitionrelated publications – in particular, its Summer Exhibition catalogues and the Royal Academy Illustrated – the display focuses on the array of guides, pamphlets and illustrated supplements that were issued by other publishers in the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the exhibition enjoyed an especially high reputation and huge popularity.

Supporting the Spectacle is designed to provide a brief introduction to this little-investigated yet fascinating subject, and to shine a light on an especially vibrant period in the history of artistic commentary and publication in Britain.

Front cover and opposite: A selection of materials related to the Summer Exhibition from the PMC’s collection 1

Upright display case

A history of RA publishing The upright display case focuses on the RA’s in-house publications. The Academy has published a catalogue to accompany its Annual Exhibition every year since the first display in 1769. Meanwhile, the institution also publishes the Summer Exhibition Illustrated, previously known as The Royal Academy Illustrated. This publication includes illustrations of some of the work on display particularly that submitted by Royal Academicians - and provides a popular souvenir of the show.

Front cover of Royal Academy Illustrated, 1940, found in the PMC’s collection 2

The RA exhibition catalogues Ever since 1780, the Summer Exhibition catalogue [item 1] has provided its readers with a list of works that is organised in the order in which these works are distributed across the exhibition. For much of its history, the catalogue has provided an immensely popular, even essential, supplement to the exhibition. In 1886, for example, 111,730 RA Summer Exhibition catalogues were sold.1 They have long been used by exhibition-goers to chart their journey around the exhibition space, and to note those works which they consider to be most important or interesting. Their production has continued in the same fundamental fashion until today. In 2000 the publication’s formal title was changed to List of Works [item 7 & 9]; however, it has continued to include the same basic information as its predecessors.

A selection of recent Summer Exhibition catalogues from the PMC’s collection 4

The RA’s illustrated supplements Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Academy, prompted by the success of the illustrated commentaries on the exhibition that were being issued by external publishers, decided to respond in kind. In 1886 the first illustrated catalogue was commissioned [item 2]. This offered supporters of the RA a luxury publication which featured an index of the exhibiting artists and 150 full-page reproductions in photogravure of some of the principal works in the display. The monumental size of the book confirms that it was not meant to be a guidebook, carried around the exhibition; rather, it was to be taken home and perused at leisure.

Although it contained elegant photographic reproductions of the work on display, the catalogue was not cost-effective, and took too long to produce to make it a viable annual project.

The RA’s second attempt at producing a cost-effective illustrated guide was the Royal Academy Illustrated [items 3, 4, 5, 6 & 8], the publication of which began in 1916, and has continued, in various forms, to this day. Unlike its predecessor, the Royal Academy Illustrated did not include a list of works and artists, or diagrams of how the rooms were hung. Instead, it centred upon photographic illustrations of a selection of the paintings from the exhibition. In 2012 the publication’s title was changed to the Summer Exhibition Illustrated.

A selection of copies of the Royal Academy Illustrated and Summer Exhibition Illustrated from the PMC’s collection 7

Detail from item 2: Knighton Warren, The Marquis Tseng, Chinese Minister, awaiting officials on new year’s day

Upright display case: object list 1

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Royal Academy of Arts, The exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1834: the sixty-sixth (London: printed

by W Clowes and Sons, 1834) (included in: Royal Academy catalogues 1829-1839)

Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy Illustrated 1962: a souvenir of the 194th summer exhibition (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1962)

Royal Academy of Arts, The 231st Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition 99 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1999)

LR: 062 LON-RAA

2 Royal Academy of Arts, The Royal Academy of Arts official illustrated catalogue of the exhibition, 1886, the 118th. (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1886) Kindly lent by the Royal Academy of Arts Royal Academy Library Record Number: 14/1313 3 Royal Academy of Arts, The Royal Academy Illustrated 1917 (London: Walter Judd, 1917) LR: 062 LON-RAA

Donated by Peter and Renate Nahum

Donated by Estate of Brian Sewell LR: 062 LON-RAA

LR: 062 LON-RAA

5 Bernard Dunstan RA, The Royal Academy Illustrated 1988: A souvenir of the 220th summer exhibition (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1988) Donated by Peter and Renate Nahum LR: 062 LON-RAA

6 Michael Kenny, Royal Academy Illustrated 1999: A selection from the 231st Summer Exhibition (London: Royal Academy, 1999)

8 Eileen Cooper, Summer Exhibition Illustrated 2017: a selection from the 249th summer exhibition (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2017) LR: 062 LON-RAA

9 Royal Academy of Arts, Summer Exhibition: List of works 2017 (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2017) LR: 062 LON-RAA

Donated by the Estate of Brian Sewell LR: 062 LON-RAA

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Large flat case

Souvenir guides Interest in the RA and its Summer Exhibition flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Huge numbers of visitors travelled to Burlington House to see the annual show and newspaper reviews pored over the exhibition’s contents in great detail. A dramatic boom in publications on the Summer Exhibition accompanied this growth of interest in the event. The items in this display case shed light on the critics, art periodicals and publishers who offered their own perspectives on the exhibition.

John Ruskin wrote and published extended, and often controversial, annual commentaries on the exhibition between 1853 and 1857, and in 1875 [item 10].

His commentaries encouraged the publication of other critical pamphlets on the display. William Rossetti offered his responses to the exhibition in 1868 in Notes on the Royal Academy Exhibition, whilst Henry Furniss published his satirical Royal Academy Antics in 1890 (both publications can be found in the PMC’s library).

The Year’s Art [item 11] was a more impartial annual publication, published from 1880 onwards. It provided readers with a round-up of the year’s events in the art world.

It dedicated a large portion of space 10

Title page of item 13

to the Academy’s news, including information about the Summer Exhibition, and complete lists of the exhibitors at the show and the titles of their works. In 1887 it included illustrations borrowed from Henry Blackburn’s Academy Sketches.

Henry Blackburn, a leading commercial publisher, released the first issue of Academy Notes [item 12] in 1875; this offered readers a textual commentary on the summer display, diagrams of the hang and some sketches of prominent pictures. An innovator in the field of illustrated book publication, Blackburn released Academy Sketches [item 13] in 1883, to complement the Notes.

Sketches was filled with line drawings of the works on display; its textual content was largely limited to the captions that listed a work’s title and producer. Both publications were intended to serve as accompaniments to the official catalogue, and recycled the Academy’s catalogue numbers for each of the works they depicted.

A demand for a photographic souvenir of the display grew in the same period, and was met temporarily by The Royal Academy Album, which was published between 1875 and 1877 [item 15]. The RA allowed the Album’s

photographers into the exhibition just a few days before it opened to the public, so as to allow them to rove around the display and carry out their work. The example displayed here is from 1877, and shows photographs taken of a variety of works.

Another attempt at publishing an illustrated guide using photographic reproductions was made by the Magazine of Art in 1888. In that year, it released a supplement, Royal Academy Pictures [item 14], that outlived the Magazine itself by twelve years. Although this supplement was not published by the RA, it is considered to have been the predecessor to the official Academy Illustrated, which succeeded Pictures in 1916. The photographic reproductions were declared by the publisher to be ‘quite sufficient’ to give a good general idea of the contents of the exhibition galleries.2 The Black and White handbook to the Royal Academy and New Gallery Pictures [item 16] and The Pall Mall Gazette [item 17] provided their own photographic accompaniments to the exhibition and helped fill the gap left by The Royal Academy Album when it ceased publication in 1877.

Front cover of item 14

Front cover of Harry Furniss, Royal Academy Antics, 1890, found in the PMC’s collection

Detail from item 15: W Clalder Marshall The Prodigal Son 13

Above: Front cover of item 11 Opposite: Detail from item 15: F. MacWhirter, The Source of a River

Small flat case: object list 10

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John Ruskin, Notes on some of the principal pictures exhibited in the rooms of the Royal Academy and the Society of Painters in water colours etc. no III 1857 (London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1857)

Royal Academy Pictures, 1899: Illustrating the hundred and thirty-first Exhibition of the Royal Academy – being the Royal Academy supplement of The Magazine of Art (London: Cassell, 1899)

Donated by Peter and Renate Nahum

LR: 062 LON-RAA

LR: 062 LON-RAA

11 Marcus B. Huish, The Year’s Art 1887 (London: J .S. Virtue & Co, 1887) Donated by Peter and Renate Nahum LR: JOURNALS - Y

12 Henry Blackburn, The Academy Notes, with which is incorporated Academy Sketches, 1899: with illustrations of the principal pictures at Burlington House (London: Chatto and Windus, 1899) LR: 062 LON-RAA

13 Henry Blackburn, Academy Sketches including various exhibitions for 1883, 1884, 1885 (London: W. H. Allen & Co, 1885)

15 Samuel Jennings, The Royal Academy Album: a series of permanent photographs from the works of art in the exhibition of the Royal Academy, 1877 (London, Cassell Petter & Galpin, 1877) LR: 094 ROY

16 ‘Black & White’ Handbook to the Royal Academy and New Gallery Pictures 1894 (London: Black & White, 1894) Donated by Peter and Renate Nahum LR: 062 LON-RAA

17 The Pictures of 1887: Pall Mall Gazette extra, no. 34. (London: Pall Mall Gazette, 1888) LR: JOURNALS - 19th CENTURY

Donated by Peter and Renate Nahum LR: 7.03 ACA

Detail from item 24: John Collier, Pope Urban V1

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Detail from item 19

‘And the two highly moral pictures, 101 and 335, which are meant to enforce on the public mind the touching theories that, for the labouring poor, grass is not green, nor the geese white; and that on the pastoral poor, the snow falls dirty, might have delivered their solemn message just as convincingly from a more elevated stage of the wall-pulpit, without leaving on the minds of any profane spectator like myself, the impression of their having been executed by a converted cross-sweeper, with his broom, after it was worn stumpy.’ Detail from item 20

Small flat case

Case studies When looked at in detail, the various guides, commentaries and catalogues published to accompany each year’s Summer Exhibition provide vivid introductions to many of the works of art that were to be found on display at the Academy.

This case explores the ways in which three such works were recorded and discussed in the Exhibition-related publications of the Victorian period.

“The Bearers of Burden” – George Henry Boughton, 1875 Boughton’s painting is featured in the first Academy Notes [item 19] in 1875. A linear illustration is included to help the reader understand what the painting looked like, and a diagram shows where the painting hung on the wall. In the Notes, Blackburn praises the painting as ‘one of the most impressive pictures of the year’5. He goes on to give a brief description of the work, in which he suggests the kind of response the painting would evoke in the viewer: ‘we seem to hear every moaning of the wind as the thistle is blown across the moor’6.

John Ruskin [item 20] in Notes on some of the Principle Pictures, expresses a very different view.

He criticises the same painting for ‘rubbing half the canvas over with black or brown’7.

In the absence of any modern reproductions of Boughton’s work, a reproduction of an etching made for the 1878 Exposition Universalle

by Leon Gaucherel [item 18] is included in the display to give a better idea of what the painting actually looked like.

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“Lancelot du Lac” – Sir John Gilbert, RA, 1887 A modern reproduction of “Lancelot du Lac” is to be found on page 21 of this pamphlet. The linear illustration in Academy Sketches [item 21] offers a faithful representation of the original painting.

Blackburn featured the same illustration in both Academy Notes and Academy Sketches in 1887. By this point Blackburn’s publications tended to feature less text than had been the case in the past, and to devote more space to illustrations.

Displayed next to Blackburn’s depiction is a satirical sketch from An Artistic Joke by Harry Furniss [item 22], of 1887. This offers an example of the kind of gentle lampooning that was often directed at the Academy and its artists in this period. ‘Sir John, or the last King of the Lord Mayor’s Show’ resembles Gilbert’s painting but is drawn in a cartoon-like style.

Detail from item 22

Opposite, above: Detail from item 21 Opposite, below: Detail from John Gilbert, Lancelot du Lac, 1887 20

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“The Blood of the Grape” – Frank Brangwyn, RA, 1896 Blackburn featured a sketched illustration of Brangwyn’s “The Blood of the Grape” - a painting later titled “Triumph of Bacchus” - in the 1896 edition of Academy Notes [item 23]. As was increasingly the norm, the image was published without any written commentary.

A photograph of the same painting was also featured on a full page spread in the 1896 Royal Academy Pictures [item 24]. The photograph, though black and white, gives an excellent idea of what the painting looked like.

The painting seems to have disappeared from sight in the early-twentieth century. It may have been destroyed, lost or

sold into a private collection. No modern reproductions have yet been located. This suggests one of the great virtues of the illustrated publications of the period: they can alert us to the appearance of lost works of art, and help us learn more about their contents and character.

Above: Detail from item 23 Below: Detail from item 24 22

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Leon Gaucherel after George Henry Boughton Bearers of Burden, ca 1879, reproduction of etching.

Henry Blackburn, The Academy Notes with which is incorporated Academy Sketches 1896: with illustrations of the principal pictures at Burlington House (London: Chatto and Windus, 1896) (included in: [Academy notes 1895-98])

19 Henry Blackburn, Academy Notes 1875: with illustrations of some of the principal pictures at Burlington House (London: Chatto and Windus, 1875) (included in: Academy Notes 1875-78) LR: 062 LON-RAA

20 John Ruskin, Notes on some of the principal pictures exhibited in the rooms of the Royal Academy: 1875 (Orpington: George Allen, 1875) LR: 062 LON-RAA

LR: 062 LON-RAA

24 The Magazine of Art, Royal Academy Pictures 1896: illustrating the hundred and twenty-eighth exhibition of the Royal Academy: being the Royal Academy supplement of The Magazine of Art (London: Cassell, 1896) LR: 062 LON-RAA

21 Henry Blackburn, Academy Sketches : a supplemental volume of sketches of paintings, watercolours, etc. in the Royal Academy, Grosvenor Gallery, and other exhibitions : fifth year, 1887 (included in: [Academy sketches 1886-91]) LR: 7.03 ACA

22 Harry Furniss, Harry Furniss’s Royal Academy, ‘an artistic joke’ : a catalogue of the exhibition, containing over eighty illustrations after the artists (London: Forgotten Books, c2015) LR: 062 LON-RAA

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Endnotes 1.

Royal Academy Annual Report, 1886, p. 29

2. Royal Academy Pictures London, 1886, p.i 3. Academy Notes Henry Blackburn, London, 1875 p. 11 4. Academy Notes Henry Blackburn, London, 1875 p. 12 5. Notes on Some of the Principle Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal Academy, Oprington, 1875 p.31

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition:

A Chronicle, 1769–2018 Fill in the gaps. Visit each year of the Summer Exhibition and search the digitised catalogues at chronicle250.com.

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