Royal Academy Exhibition of 1849

The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1849 was the eighty first edition of the annual Summer Exhibition staged by the British Royal Academy of Arts. It took place at the National Gallery in London from 7 May to 28 July 1849, featuring submissions from prominent artists, sculptors and architects of the early Victorian era. It was noted for the emergence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.[1]

While John Everett Millais had first displayed a work at the Academy in 1846, this was his debut painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style with Isabella, a scene inspired by the poem of the same title by John Keats. William Holman Hunt's Rienzi was drawn from the novel of the same title by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Another member of the Brotherhood James Collinson's Italian Image Makers at a Roadside Alehouse attracted much less attention. These were not the first ever exhibitions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti had already submitted The Girlhood of Mary Virgin to the Free Exhibition of Modern Art at Hyde Park Corner which opened in March. Rossetti had originally planned to send the work to the Royal Academy but chose the smaller, juryless Free Exhibition instead.[2]

It was the penultimate appearance of the veteran J.M.W. Turner who had been exhibiting at the Royal Academy for many decades. He submitted a single work The Wreck Buoy, a reworking of a much earlier painting that he had added significant amounts of colour to enhance its brightness.[3] In addition the owner of another one of Turner's earlier paintings Venus and Adonis exhibited that as well.[4]

In portraiture Henry Wyndham Phillips painted the exiled Austrian statesman Metternich which resembled the much earlier Klemens von Metternich by Thomas Lawrence.[5] [6] Henry William Pickersgill featured several works including portraits of the architects Charles Barry and Thomas Cubitt.

References

  1. ^ "1849 The Arrival of the "PRB"". chronicle250.com. Retrieved 2025-08-25.
  2. ^ "1849 The Arrival of the "PRB"". chronicle250.com. Retrieved 2025-08-25.
  3. ^ Spencer-Longhurst p.26
  4. ^ "Leicester Galleries | Venus and Adonis". www.leicestergalleries.com. Retrieved 2025-08-25.
  5. ^ Fitzmaurice p.115-16
  6. ^ "His Excellency The Prince Metternich | The Walters Art Museum". art.thewalters.org. Retrieved 2025-08-25.

Bibliography

  • Bailey, Anthony. J.M.W. Turner: Standing in the Sun. Tate Enterprises, 2013.
  • Fitzmaurice, Andrew. King Leopold's Ghostwriter: The Creation of Persons and States in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton University Press, 2024.
  • Spencer-Longhurst, Paul. The Sun Rising Through Vapour: Turner's Early Seascapes. Third Millennium Information, 2003.
  • Van der Merwe, Pieter & Took, Roger. The Spectacular career of Clarkson Stanfield. Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1979.
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