The St Martin's Lane Academy, a precursor of the Royal Academy, was organised in 1735 by William Hogarth, from the circle of artists and designers who gathered at Slaughter's Coffee House at the upper end of St Martin's Lane, London. The artistic set that introduced the Rococo style to England was centred on "Old Slaughter's" and the drawing-classes at the St. Martin's Lane Academy were inextricably linked in the dissemination of new artistic ideas in England in the reigns of George II and George III.
In Britain in the early eighteenth century there was no organised public official patronage of the arts, aside from commissions for specific projects. There was no established body to compare with the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture that Jean-Baptiste Colbert had established in France, and no public exhibitions of recent paintings along the lines of the Paris salons, held every other year.
The closest approximation to an academic life-drawing class was established in Great Queen Street in 1711 under twelve directors, with Sir Godfrey Kneller as its governor. George Vertue, a founder-member, describes it as "the Academy of Painting", although there is no evidence that any painting was ever done there. [1] Sir James Thornhill took over from Kneller in 1718, but a few years later, after a period of infighting, he started a new academy, [1] conducting life-drawing classes from a room he added to his own house in James Street, Covent Garden, from 1724 [2] while a faction led by John Vanderbank and Louis Chéron set up what they advertised as "The Academy for the Improvement of Painters and Sculptors by drawing from the Naked" at premises in St Martin's Lane. It proved popular, but failed after a few years when the subscriptions were embezzled by the treasurer. [1] Thornhill continued his life-classes until his death in May 1734, but had little success in finding subscribers. Hogarth, (who was Thornhill's son-in-law) attributed its failure at least in part to the competition from Vanderbank and Cheron.
It was Hogarth who established the St. Martin's Lane Academy in 1735, using the equipment from Thornhill's studio, and he remained its central figure. It is sometimes referred to as the "Second St Martin's Lane Academy", to differentiate it from that of Vanderbank and Chéron. [1] Hogarth wrote an account of its formation in about 1760, [3] in which he takes credit for the democratic principle that all should contribute an equal sum to the Academy's expenses and have an equal vote, "attributing the failure of the previous academies to the leading members having assumed a superiority which their fellow-students could not brook." Thus the academy abandoned hierarchic seventeenth-century precedents and was formed on the basis of a club.[ citation needed ] The members of the academy took turns to "set" the model – that is decide his or her pose – rather than having this done by a paid director of the sort employed in French academies. Hogarth was opposed to copying from pictures, but there may have been casts to work from, inherited from Thornhill's studio. [1] The premises of the Academy were a large room in Peter's Court, entered from St Martin's Lane through a low vaulted passageway. [4]
The membership of the academy was formed from an informal, club-like circle that was in the habit of meeting at Old Slaughter's Coffee House, which had been at 74 and 75, St. Martin's Lane since 1692, when the neighbourhood was still distinctly suburban. [5] It was known as"Old" Slaughter's Coffee House after 1742, [6] when a new Slaughter's Coffee House opened, at no. 82 (more recently the site of Westminster County Court). [7]
Hogarth seems to have had some assistance in running the academy. [1] George Vertue noted early in 1745 "The academy for the study of painting & other artists [sic] is carryd on and conducted by several, Ellis, Hayman, Gravelot, Wills— &c..." Of these four named by Vertue, the most obscure is James Wills (working c. 1740–1777), later the Rev. James Wills. In 1754 he made a translation of du Fresnoy's stilted and old-fashioned Latin poem on the art of painting, De arte graphica, which did not meet a successful reception. [8] but which apparently identifies Wills as the "Fresnoy" who published bitterly sarcastic invective at Sir Joshua Reynolds and artists like Zoffany who had left the Society of Artists to join the newly founded Royal Academy. [9] His conversation piece The Andrews Family (signed "J. Wills pinxit" and dated 1749) is in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum. [10] Edward Edwards' continuation of Walpole's Anecdotes of Painters (1808:55) notes that Wills had painted some portraits and historical subjects, "but not meeting much success in his profession he quit it, and having received a liberal education, took orders. He was for some years curate at Cannons, Middlesex, where the prominent cabinet-maker of St. Martin's Lane William Hallett had built a residence on part of the foundations of the great demolished house. In 1772 Wills was appointed to the living at Canons by Hallett's grandson, the subject, with his wife, of Gainsborough's The Morning Walk (1787). [11]
Hogarth's involvement with the academy began to decline in 1753, following the circulation by its secretary, Francis Milner Newton, of a letter calling a meeting with the intention of electing 24 artists as professors of a putative public academy. Hogarth had long been opposed to the idea of such an institution. Newton's plans came to nothing, and the academy continued, under Francis Hayman and George Michael Moser. Moser moved the school to Pall Mall in 1767, and it closed four years later, when he became the first keeper of the Royal Academy. [1]
Among the members of the St. Martin's Lane Academy were the engraver and book illustrator Hubert Gravelot; François Roubiliac, a French sculptor established in London; the painter Francis Hayman and his pupil, the very young Thomas Gainsborough who was employed by Gravelot; the Swiss-born artist and enameller George Michael Moser; the medallist Richard Yeo and the architect Isaac Ware. Desmond Fitz-Gerald notes that an asterisk in the list of subscribers to Joshua Kirby's, Dr Brook Taylor's Method of Perspective Made Easy (London 1754) identifies members of the St. Martin's Lane Academy, and notes as further members the architect James Paine; Charles, son of Henry Cheere, sculptor; and Johann Sebastian Müller, an engraver of Chippendale's Director. [12]
An unexpected member of the circle was James Stuart, trained as a painter but familiar as one of the earliest practitioners of Neoclassicism in Europe; that later phase was far in the future when he moved in the Academy's milieu, introduced by the engravers Louis and Joseph Goupy, both of whom were members. [13]
The painters involved in the academy were reacting against the Italianate Late Baroque manner exemplified by Thornhill himself, [14] while the designers were developing alternatives to the cool Neo-Palladianism being espoused at the time by Lord Burlington and William Kent; the rococo artists found patrons, as Mark Girouard first noted, in the circle that formed around Frederick, Prince of Wales in Leicester Square.
Not all the artists in St. Martin's Lane were members of the Academy. Matthew Lock, the draughtsman and engraver who engraved most of the designs for Chippendale's Director, advertised in 1748 that he was offering evening drawing-classes for tradesmen and students in his premises "Facing Old Slaughter's Coffee House". [15] and Thomas Chippendale, the most famous maker of English rococo furniture, seem never to have joined. [16]
Other French Protestant emigrés were drawn to the mix of English and foreigners at Slaughter's. Abraham de Moivre, friend of Newton and Halley, eked out a meagre existence as a tutor, spending evening hours at Slaughter's. [17] at the time chiefly interesting to gamblers seeking to maximise their odds rather than to statisticians. Other intellectuals were drawn to the atmosphere of Slaughter's: Joseph Priestley met in a virtual "Slaughter's Club" with Josiah Wedgwood, Captain Cook and Sir Joseph Banks. [18]
The presence of several outstanding cabinetmakers in St. Martin's Lane was influential in translating Rococo designs into furnishings. In December 1753, directly across from Old Slaughter's Thomas Chippendale took a long lease on three houses that served as his premises for the rest of his career. [19] A chance remark establishes that the cabinet-maker John Linnell attended life-classes at the St. Martin's Lane Academy, [20] and William Hallett also had workshops in the Lane.
In the 1760s Old Slaughter's Coffee House was the place where the Italian painter Antonio Zucchi, brought to London by Robert Adam, formed a friendship with the literary intellectual Jean-Paul Marat , "a man of extensive classical learning who continually proposed subjects which he had selected for Zucchi to design", the painter Joseph Farington noted in his diary, after Marat's subsequent revolutionary career had run its course; [21] Marat came to Zucchi's house "in the most familiar manner, a knife and fork laid for him every day." [22] At a later date it was "over a Neck of Veal and Potatoes, at the Old Slaughter Coffee House", [23] that the liberal scientific Club of Honest Whigs, centred on the figure of Benjamin Franklin was formed.
The artistic circle meeting at Old Slaughter's Coffee House was revived from its obscurity in a series of articles by Mark Girouard. [24]
Abraham de Moivre was a French mathematician known for de Moivre's formula, a formula that links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory.
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic, and editorial cartoonist. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects", He is perhaps best known for his series A Harlot's Progress, A Rake's Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode. Knowledge of his work is so pervasive that satirical political illustrations in this style are often referred to as "Hogarthian".
Sir James Thornhill was an English painter of historical subjects working in the Italian baroque tradition. He was responsible for some large-scale schemes of murals, including the "Painted Hall" at the Royal Hospital, Greenwich, the paintings on the inside of the dome of St Paul's Cathedral, and works at Chatsworth House and Wimpole Hall.
Paul Sandby was an English map-maker turned landscape painter in watercolours, who, along with his older brother Thomas, became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768.
Louis-François Roubiliac was a French sculptor who worked in England, one of the four most prominent sculptors in London working in the rococo style, He was described by Margaret Whinney as "probably the most accomplished sculptor ever to work in England".
The Art of the United Kingdom refers to all forms of visual art in or associated with the United Kingdom since the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707 and encompass English art, Scottish art, Welsh art and Irish art, and forms part of Western art history. During the 18th century Britain began to reclaim the leading place England had played in European art during the Middle Ages, being especially strong in portraiture and landscape art. Increasing British prosperity led to a greatly increased production of both fine art and the decorative arts, the latter often being exported. The Romantic period resulted from very diverse talents, including the painters William Blake, J. M. W. Turner, John Constable and Samuel Palmer. The Victorian period saw a great diversity of art, and a far larger quantity created than before. Much Victorian art is now out of critical favour, with interest concentrated on the Pre-Raphaelites and the innovative movements at the end of the 18th century.
Vauxhall Gardens is a public park in Kennington, London, England, on the south bank of the River Thames.
St Martin's Lane is a street in the City of Westminster, which runs from the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, after which it is named, near Trafalgar Square northwards to Long Acre. At its northern end, it becomes Monmouth Street. St. Martin's Lane and Monmouth Street together form the B404.
John Vanderbank was an English portraitist and book illustrator, who enjoyed a high reputation for a short while during the reign of King George I, but who died relatively young due to an intemperate and extravagant lifestyle.
Events from the year 1788 in art.
Hubert-François Bourguignon, commonly known as Gravelot, was a French engraver, a famous book illustrator, designer and drawing-master. Born in Paris, he emigrated to London in 1732, where he quickly became a central figure in the introduction of the Rococo style in British design, which was disseminated from London in this period, through the media of book illustrations and engraved designs as well as by the examples of luxury goods in the "French taste" brought down from London to provincial towns and country houses.
Beer Street and Gin Lane are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act. Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a contrast to the merits of drinking beer. At almost the same time and on the same subject, Hogarth's friend Henry Fielding published An Inquiry into the Late Increase in Robbers. Issued together with The Four Stages of Cruelty, the prints continued a movement started in Industry and Idleness, away from depicting the laughable foibles of fashionable society and towards a more cutting satire on the problems of poverty and crime.
George Lambert was an English landscape artist and theatre scene painter. With Richard Wilson he is recognised as a pioneer of English landscape in art, for its own sake.
The Rose and Crown Club was a club for artists, collectors and connoisseurs of art in early 18th-century London, England.
Louis Chéron was a French painter, illustrator and art tutor.
Bernard Baron was a French engraver and etcher who spent much of his life in England.
Gerard Vandergucht was an English engraver and art dealer.
John Ellys or Ellis was an English portrait-painter.
Stephen Slaughter was an English portrait painter. He spent periods of his career in Dublin, where he introduced the English style of portrait painting.
Old Slaughter's Coffee House was a coffee house in St Martin's Lane in London. Opened in 1692 by Thomas Slaughter, it was the haunt of many of the important personages of the period. The building was demolished in 1843 when Cranbourn Street was constructed.