Highlights from the RA Collection
Collection Gallery, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts
1 Jan — 31 Dec 2023
Highlights from the RA Collection
From Michelangelo to Moser, visit the Collection Gallery for free to see highlights from the RA Collection.
Please note: this free display will be open until 9pm on Friday evenings.
A sixteenth century copy of Leonardo’s Last Supper, the only marble sculpture by Michelangelo in the UK, works by leading British artists from the last 250 years – the Collection Gallery is a treasure trove of masterpieces.
Visit for free to see works by leading early Academicians including Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA, Mary Moser RA and Angelica Kauffman RA, alongside highlights from the collection of art they began in eighteenth century, and changing displays featuring contemporary Academicians.
In the year of the 300th anniversary of our first President Sir Joshua Reynolds, discover the story of the founding of the Royal Academy and explore self-portraits by recent Academicians.
1 January 2021 — 31 December 2023
Tues–Sun: 10am–6pm
Fri: 10am–9pm
Free, no booking required
Collection Gallery, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts
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Gallery
Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John, known as the Taddei Tondo, c.1504–05.
Giampietrino and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, Copy of Leonardo's The Last Supper, c.1515-20.
Cast of Laocoön and his Sons (Roman version of a lost Greek original), c.100BC-50AD.
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Image of the Artist
Discover self-portraits by current and recent Royal Academicians from the last 50 years.
In the year of the 300th anniversary of our first President Sir Joshua Reynolds, the works in this display reconsider the role of the artist in society today. Aspects of self are revealed or concealed, as these artists explore the power of images and image-makers and investigate wider questions of identity and belonging.
See a self-portrait by Dame Paula Rego RA, on public display in the UK for the first time, recently acquired Diploma Works by Hew Locke RA and Clare Woods RA, alongside self-portraits by Anthony Green RA, Patrick Procktor RA, Chantal Joffe RA, Gillian Wearing RA, and Sir Sidney Nolan RA.
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Emma Stibbon RA
Collapsed Whaling Station Deception Island, Antarctica: A work in focus
This display centres around Emma Stibbon’s RA ‘Diploma work’, the large-scale woodcut Collapsed Whaling Station, Deception Island, Antarctica. Stibbon is drawn to environments that have been shaped by both the elemental forces of nature and the impact of human endeavour.
Her Diploma work is accompanied by a selection of prints, drawings and photographs that resonate with this theme and highlight how ruination, extreme conditions and the fragility of place have long held a fascination for artists.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Video: how we made Mr. Turner
Who was Mr. Turner? A contradiction, Timothy Spall told us at a recent panel discussion on Mike Leigh’s biopic. Watch the event and a behind-the-scenes video about the film here.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Artist of the month: November 2014
Though famous for his vignettes of high society in elegant interior settings, perhaps the most enduring of William Quiller Orchardson RA’s works is of his daughter on a billowy cliff walk.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Object of the month: November 2014
Typical of the work of Allen Jones RA in its examination of the voyeuristic gaze, this print depicts the psychology of human interaction in bold unmodulated colours.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Explore the John Madejski Fine Rooms rehang
Learn more about some of the highlights of our Collection that have recently gone on show in the John Madejski Fine Rooms.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Object of the month: October 2014
Originally cast in 1776 from the corpse of a smuggler fresh from execution, ‘Smugglerius’ was commissioned to improve the teaching of anatomy in the RA Schools.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Artist of the month: October 2014
Inspired by nature, John Constable RA brought landscape art into the public eye at a time when portraiture and historical subjects were much more widely esteemed.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
The RA Collection on the road in Japan
Two members of the RA Collection team have just returned from Japan where they were transferring an exhibition of works from the RA across the country.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Object of the month: September 2014
Combining several elements of his work, this piece features the crowds common to works by Lowry, who often painted from memory or imagination.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Artist of the month: September 2014
A student at the RA schools, John Phillip RA’s association with the Royal Academy began at a young age, stowing away on a ship from Aberdeen to London to visit the Royal Academy Exhibition.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
In pictures: restoring a national treasure
Behind the scenes with the conservators working on our Maclise cartoon.
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Our Collection
> 8 years ago
Object of the Month: August 2014
Taken from one of the artist’s sketchbooks, this captures the Italian town of Nonantola just prior to the beginnings of the First World War.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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