Flowing Lines of Grace
Drawing Drapery in the Late Nineteenth Century
26 July — 7 October 2016
The classical revival in British art and sculpture during the second half of the nineteenth century fuelled the widespread fascination for all things antique.
For Frederic Lord Leighton PRA (1830–1896), Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema RA (1836–1912) and George Frederic Watts RA (1817–1904), the drapery of classical Greek sculpture represented an aesthetic and physical ideal. In numerous studies of drapery, they strove to emulate the style, folds and forms of their sculptural counterparts; these drawings played a crucial part in the artistic process of creating paintings that abounded with scenes from mythology and the imagined daily life of ancient Greece and Rome.
Featuring drawings, engravings and contemporary publications from the RA’s Historic Book collection, this display explores the influence of classical drapery on these artists’ work and the ways in which it was perceived to represent the epitome of beauty.
26 July — 7 October 2016
Tuesday – Friday
10am – 1pm and 2 – 5pm
Complimentary entry with a valid Royal Academy exhibition ticket or £3 General Admission ticket. Friends of the RA and under 16s go free.
RA Library Print Room
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Gallery
Lord Leighton PRA, Study of an elaborate sleeve, Early 1860s.
G. F. Watts RA, Studies of drapery for the fresco 'Justice: A Hemicycle of Lawgivers', 1859.
Lord Leighton PRA, Study for Perseus and Andromeda, About 1891.
G. F. Watts RA, Eight drapery studies, Probably 1870s or later.
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Drawing texture
Two-day practical workshop
Enjoy the total absorption of careful looking and rendering using traditional drawing techniques. Throughout this two-day course, participants will focus on creases and folds in a variety of man made and organic textured surfaces.
Artist Tanya Wood will lead an exclusive workshop inspired and informed by traditional drawing skills, works in the Royal Academy collection, contemporary artists and her own practice of meticulous realist pencil drawing. Participants will work from the close observation and scrutiny of a variety of textured surfaces within the Academy’s historic Life Room.
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Our Collection
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Our Collection
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Our Collection
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Our Collection
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Our Collection
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Our Collection
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Our Collection
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Our Collection
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Our Collection
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Artist of the Month: August 2014
George Clausen is remembered for the range of his remarkable accomplishments, both as an artist and as a dedicated Member of the RA.
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Inside the Academy
> 8 years ago
Dazzle ships and the Royal Academy
How the RA played a role in the development of a dazzling new form of camouflage.
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Inside the Academy
> 8 years ago
The Royal Academy joins the war effort
With volunteers drilling in the courtyard and the Red Cross taking over the galleries, the RA soon found itself at the centre of the war effort.
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Inside the Academy
> 8 years ago
4 August 1914: the declaration of war
A snapshot of the Royal Academy on 4 August 1914, with the country poised on the brink of war.
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Inside the Academy
> 8 years ago
Lights Out at the RA: commemorating the First World War
We’re joining in with a national moment of reflection on Monday 4 August.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
James Ward RA’s ‘Defence of the Beard’
A small pamphlet, discovered deep within our archives, shows that the beard as the defining feature of hipster facial fashion has been around longer than you might think.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
RA Collection acquires first film work
The film ‘Love has no reason’ by RA Schools graduate Julie Born Schwartz has been added to the Royal Academy’s historic Collection.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Artist of the Month: July 2014
As a flamboyantly self-styled “working-class cockney”, Ruskin Spear RA found subjects for painting in the pubs, snooker halls and streets of Hammersmith, Fulham, Shepherd’s Bush and Chiswick.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Object of the month: July 2014
These two canvases are a study for a panoramic work, ‘A Closer Grand Canyon’, which was made up of 96 individual canvases and painted in 1998.
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Inside the Academy
> 8 years ago
Community Art Club: forging a connection
For many homeless and marginalised people, art-making can seem a closed-off world. Our learning team tell us how the RA is trying to change that.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Artist of the Month: June 2014
The works of the architect, and subject of our ‘Dream, Draw, Work’ exhibition, recall the now rare traditional skills and techniques of architectural design, from working drawings to beautiful ink drawings.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Object of the month: June 2014
One of the treasures of the Royal Academy Collection is now on display in a new exhibition about Michelangelo at the Capitoline Museum in Rome.
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RA Exhibitions
< 9 years ago
Tasting architectural drawings
Neil Bingham, curator of the RA exhibition ‘Dream Draw Work: Architectural Drawings of Norman Shaw RA’ confesses to a curatorial crime.
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Our Collection
< 9 years ago
Object of the Month: May 2014
One of the most influential figures in twentieth-century British art, Sickert’s Diploma work uses an impasto style to depict the ornate Baroque decorations of the Santa Maria della Salute in Venice.
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Our Collection
< 9 years ago
Artist of the Month: May 2014
Child prodigy Angelica Kauffman went on to be a founder-member of the Royal Academy. Her paintings and drawings were widely reproduced and were particularly popular in England, often being used in interior decorations.
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Our Collection
< 9 years ago
From aquatints to woodcuts: a visual glossary of original prints
We take a look at the main printmaking techniques and some of the terminology you’ll encounter when looking at original prints.
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Our Collection
< 9 years ago
Object of the Month: April 2014
The influence of Aitchison’s travels to Italy is evident in this representation of the Crucifixion, presented to the Academy on his election.
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Our Collection
< 9 years ago
Artist of the Month: April 2014
Born in Florence, Italy, the son of a goldsmith, Bartolozzi trained with his father before enrolling at the Florentine academy in 1742.
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Inside the Academy
< 9 years ago
With William Kent at Burlington House
As the V&A celebrates the highly influential artist and designer, we reveal how William Kent’s career came to life with his work for Burlington House – now the home of the Royal Academy.
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Our Collection
< 9 years ago
Restoring a masterpiece
Thanks to a grant from Arts Council England, Daniel Maclise’s monumental ‘Waterloo’ cartoon is to undergo conservation treatment in time for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo in 2015.
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Inside the Academy
< 9 years ago
How do Academicians get elected?
Recent years have seen a host of new innovations here at the RA, but the election process for new Academicians has hardly changed in almost 250 years. Here is how it all works.
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Our Collection
< 9 years ago
Special delivery
Helen Valentine, our Senior Curator, and Edwina Mulvany, our Registrar, have just returned from Australia where they were installing the exhibition ‘Genius and Ambition’.
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Our Collection
< 9 years ago
Object of the Month: March 2014
In 1910, C. Lewis Hind in the Art Journal, summarised Mark Fisher’s working practice thus: ‘He just walks out, sees something, feels an irresistible desire to paint it, and proceeds to paint it in the open air.’
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Our Collection
9 years ago
A chance discovery
A recently discovered drawing turns out to be a design by Richard Norman Shaw RA for the biscuit barrel that he presented to the Academy in 1883.
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Opinion
9 years ago
RA down under
Charles Saumarez Smith, our Secretary and Chief Executive, was recently in Australia to visit ‘Genius and Ambition’, an exhibition of works from our collection on show at Bendigo Art Gallery.
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Our Collection
9 years ago
Artist of the Month: March 2014
Born in Bradford in 1937, Norman Stevens enrolled at the city’s art school to study painting aged only 15.
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Inside the Academy
9 years ago
The genius of Kent
As the V&A explores the influential career of William Kent this season, we explore three works that testify to the abiding achievements of 18th-century Britain’s most versatile artist and designer.
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Our Collection
9 years ago
History returns
A slice of history has recently returned to the Royal Academy after over 200 years, in the form of an intriguing drawing by John Flaxman RA.
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Our Collection
9 years ago
Object of the month: February 2014
Terry Setch painted ‘Smoked Out’ for the exhibition Images of Paradise held at Harewood House, Yorkshire, in 1989. The exhibition was organised by Survival International, a group dedicated to protecting the lives, culture, and land of tribal peoples.
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Our Collection
9 years ago
Artist of the month: February 2014
George Frederic Watts RA was an influential and pre-eminent painter during his own lifetime. He became known for his portraiture and his Symbolist allegorical paintings, frequently depicting scenes from mythology, history, literature, and the Bible.
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Our Collection
9 years ago
Object of the month: January 2014
Joseph Farquharson RA was a landscape painter who was celebrated for his winter scenes, which he infused with a strong sense of atmosphere and mood.
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Our Collection
9 years ago
Artist of the month: January 2014
Robert Anning Bell presented ‘The Women Going to the Sepulchre’ to the Royal Academy as his diploma work on his election as a Royal Academician in 1922.
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RA Exhibitions
> 10 years ago
Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape
Tracing the emergence of landscape painting as a distinct genre in its own right.
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