The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1853 was the eighty fifth annual Summer Exhibition of the British Royal Academy of Arts. It was held at the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square in London between 2 May and 23 July 1853. [1]
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The exhibition further cemented the presence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as a major force in British art. William Holman Hunt's Our English Coasts , depicting a group of sheep on a clifftop, had taken him six months painting En plein air to complete. He also displayed Claudio and Isabella , inspired by William Shakespeare's play Measure for Measure . [2] Meanwhile John Everett Millais presented two history paintings The Proscribed Royalist , inspired by the War of the Three Kingdoms as The Order of Release , featuring a scene from the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion. [3]
Amongst veteran artists who has established their reputations in the pre-Victorian era Edwin Landseer submitted several works. Clarkson Stanfield exhibited his maritime painting The Victory Towed into Gibraltar set during the Napoleonic Wars. [4] The Scottish artist David Roberts's The Inauguration of the Great Exhibition commemorated Queen Victoria's opening of the Crystal Palace two years earlier. [5] Several paintings commemorated the Duke of Wellington who had died the previous year, while Samuel Pearce painted The Arctic Council Planning a Search for Sir John Franklin .
