R.A.'s of Genius Reflecting on the True Line of Beauty, at the Life Academy Somerset House

R.A.'s of Genius Reflecting on the True Line of Beauty, at the Life Academy Somerset House

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print was published to illustrate Charles Molloy Westmacott's "English Spy" (1832), which describes London's art world. Here, a nude female model reclines on a draped chair sketched by Royal Academicians. Each artist's easel is initialed, allowing us to identify Benjamin Robert Haydon, Martin Archer Shee, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Benjamin West, Richard Westmacott, John Jackson, Joseph Farington, and Francis Chantrey. The "Line of Beauty," which the title evokes, was an aesthetic concept promoted by William Hogarth.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

R.A.'s of Genius Reflecting on the True Line of Beauty, at the Life Academy Somerset HouseR.A.'s of Genius Reflecting on the True Line of Beauty, at the Life Academy Somerset HouseR.A.'s of Genius Reflecting on the True Line of Beauty, at the Life Academy Somerset HouseR.A.'s of Genius Reflecting on the True Line of Beauty, at the Life Academy Somerset HouseR.A.'s of Genius Reflecting on the True Line of Beauty, at the Life 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.