Drawing from Life at the Royal Academy, Somerset House

Drawing from Life at the Royal Academy, Somerset House

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Drawing from the human figure had been central to artistic training from the Italian Renaissance and, after London's Royal Academy was founded in 1768, regular life sessions were held for academicians and students. Both male and female models posed nude, but only men over the age of twenty were permitted to draw until 1898. Casts of sculptures offered another means to explore human anatomy and examples are seen here displayed on shelves around the back of the room.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Drawing from Life at the Royal Academy, Somerset HouseDrawing from Life at the Royal Academy, Somerset HouseDrawing from Life at the Royal Academy, Somerset HouseDrawing from Life at the Royal Academy, Somerset HouseDrawing from Life at the Royal Academy, Somerset House

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.