Training still free at famous art academy

Press, 24 February 1977, Page 21

Training still free at famous art academy

By

ALEC FORREST

The Royal Academy . Schools in London's Piccai dilly are the oldest of all 1 Britain’s art training centres. Since the academy’s foundation in 1768 the schools have produced many famous artists, among them Constable and Turner, and training remains free to every student who is accepted. Students should recognise the wisdom and necessity of learning “a correct design and plain manly colouring before anything more is attempted.” Sir Joshua Reynolds, a founder member and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts in Britain in 1768, offered this advice in the fifteenth and last of his famous discourses. At the same time, the great portrait painter was aware of the compulsive thrust of genius when he added: “I would not wish to cramp and fetter the mind or discourage those who follow — as most of us may at one time have followed — the suggestion of a strong inclination; something must be conceded to great and irresistible impulses; perhaps every student must not be strictly bound by general methods if they strongly thwart the peculiar turn of his own mind.” Reflecting on a similar theme, the late Sir Thomas Monnington, president of the Royal Academy from 1966 to 1976, once remarked, “Surely any development in art derives from perception free from preconception." The Royal Academy Schools at Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, are the oldest of all British art training centres. They date from the institution’s foundation in 1768 and, true to its terms of origin, train entirely free of charge, all who are accepted as students. Illustrious names So far almost 7000 aspirants to fame have passed through its classes, among them names as illustrious in English art as Turner, Constable. Lawrence. Millais. Holan Hunt, and D. G. Rossetti. Turner, who was admitted as a student aged 13 in 1789, exhibited a watercolour drawing of Lambeth Palace, home of the Archbishop of Canterbury, at the academj s annual exhibition a year later. It was his first public success. Greater precocity, however, was shown by John Everett Millais (1829-96) who joined the R.A. Schools at the tender age of 11. His oldest contemporary student was 37. Promptly nicknamed “The Child," Millais acted as errand boy for his fellows, fetching lunches for them and sometimes receiving a bun as commission for his services. Artistically, his progress was phenomenal; at 14 he won the academy's silver medal and four years later its gold medal, for an historical painting. In 1896, the academy elected him to the president's chair, but cancer struck him down and he held office for only a few weeks. Teaching structure Today the R.A. Schools’ 80 students include a

number from other countries, notably the United States and India. All possess sound basic qualifications. The courses in painting and sculpture — architecture is no longer taught there — are organised on two levels. At the top is a postgraduate certificate course, available only to those who have obtained a university degree in fine art. Successful students then gain the Royal Academy’s postgraduate certificate. The other level, defined as the certificate course, is for students with three years fulltime school of an training behind them and five examination passes in the General Certificate of Education at Ordinary level (or the equivalent). Both courses run for three years; and before admission at either level original work must be shown, followed by an interview. Out of every 300 applications, the success rate may sometimes be as low as one in 10. Peter Greenham. himself a distinguished artisi and Keeper of the Schools since 1964, said that all students begin their first term drawing from the life. “Initially, some find this irksome since already they will have spent perhaps a year or longer drawing in a life class. But the academy believes strongly in good draughtsmanship. They then spend much of their second term painting from life modles Thereafter, we give students every encouragement to develop their own preferences and ideas." Abstract painting? “l or some time this specialitj was held to be on the way out,” said Mr Greer.ham. >‘That was not true, but today, for the first time for some years, students specialising in abstract work are in the minority.” Hotter understanding His assessment of the work of present-day students was: “If I could compare an exhibition of students’ work put on 15 years ago with one today the modem exhibition would be better, not technically perhaps, but it would show a better understanding of what make a picture — balance. I tone. harmony. com- I position and colour." Professor Willi Soukop. < who heads the schools' de- I partment of sculpture, i went to Britain in 1934 after serving his apprenticeship with an engraver at the Academy i of Fine Art, Vienna. With an international reputation for his own sculpture, he I is an idea! teacher. His ■ own work adorns housing estates and new schools, as well as museums and ■■ private collections. Several aspirants from Greece, the home of Phidias and Praxiteles, have in recent times applied for training under his direction. Tuition today is more precise, scientifically, than was possible in earlier years. Professor Soukop ; for example, who lectures on the chemistry and physics of artists’ materials. covers such topics as the classification of pigments, their permanence. colour and light; the properties of material used in oil, tern- I pera. water colour, and mural painting; and the I

nature of patina on marble and bronze sculptures. Training in anatomy too is backed by modern i<seanhes. ilauallj the itt turing professor brings along one of his own medical students as a “live” illustration. In this way students pick up more readily the points he makes about the surface features of the trunk, bone and muscle construction of the head and neck, eye and ear characteristics, and changes in the body attributable to growth and ageing, sex and race differences. As can be imagined, competition is keen for a good selection of medals and prises whk h ln< lude a Turner gold medal and scholarship awarded fot a landscape painting. Othet prizes are given for a design for a mural decora lion, a head and shoulders from the life, and still life in oils, design for a figure picture in monochrome, and painting from a cast After passing through the schools, students ‘go into a wide range of jobs. A few make a living as fulltime painters. Others become teachers, com mercial artists or pick up offbeat art jobs such as doing on-the-spot drawings of the various stages of an archaeological dig in Egypt. Keeping in touch The Reynolds flub formed in 1951. enables former students to keep in touch with the academy Il issues a newsletter, and in one of the latest men non is made of Michael Noakes who, in 1975. com pleted a portrait of Princess Anne for the Sad diets’ Company, a livery company in the City of London He is now working on a large portrait ol the Queen, wearing the robes of the Order of the Bath. Commissioned by the City of Manchester, the panning wilt commemorate both the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Queen’s reign tn 1977 and the ten tenary in the same year of the building of Manchester's Town Hall.