Royal Academy Exhibition of 1849

Isabella by John Everett Millais

The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1849 was the eighty first edition of the annual Summer Exhibition staged by the British Royal Academy of Arts. It took place at the National Gallery in London from 7 May to 28 July 1849, featuring submissions from prominent artists, sculptors and architects of the early Victorian era. It was noted for the emergence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

While John Everett Millais had first displayed a work at the Academy in 1846, this was his debut painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style with Isabella, a scene inspired by the poem of the same title by John Keats. William Holman Hunt's Rienzi was drawn from the novel of the same title by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Another member of the Brotherhood James Collinson's Italian Image Makers at a Roadside Alehouse attracted much less attention. These were not the first ever exhibitions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti had already submitted The Girlhood of Mary Virgin to the Free Exhibition of Modern Art at Hyde Park Corner which opened in March. Rossetti had originally planned to send the work to the Royal Academy but chose the smaller, juryless Free Exhibition instead.

It was the penultimate appearance of the veteran J.M.W. Turner who had been exhibiting at the Royal Academy for many decades. He submitted a single work The Wreck Buoy, a reworking of a much earlier painting that he had added significant amounts of colour to enhance its brightness. In addition the owner of another one of Turner's earlier paintings Venus and Adonis exhibited that as well.

In portraiture Henry Wyndham Phillips painted the exiled Austrian statesman Metternich which resembled the much earlier Klemens von Metternich by Thomas Lawrence. Henry William Pickersgill featured several works including portraits of the architects Charles Barry and Thomas Cubitt. The Portrait of James McNeill Whistler by William Boxall depicted the future artist at the age of fourteen.

Gallery

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  Rienzi by William Holman Hunt
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  The Wreck Buoy by J.M.W. Turner
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  Italian Image Makers at a Roadside Alehouse by James Collinson
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  Tilbury Fort - Wind Against Tide by Clarkson Stanfield
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  The Desert by Edwin Landseer
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  The Free Kirk by Edwin Landseer
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  The Forester's Family by Edwin Landseer
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  The Siege and Destruction of Jerusalem by David Roberts
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  Drawing for the Militia by John Phillip
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  Coming of Age by William Powell Frith
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  Landing a Salmon by Frederick Richard Lee
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  The Ogwen Lake by Frederick Richard Lee
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  Hampton Court by George Hilditch
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  Life's Illusions by George Frederic Watts
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  The Crochet Worker by William Etty
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  Gather the Rose of Love by William Etty
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  The Last Hours of Mozart by Henry Nelson O'Neil
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  Consulting the Astrologer by Henry Nelson O'Neil
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  Launce's Substitute for Proteus' Dog by Augustus Egg
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  The See-Saw by Thomas Webster
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  Harvest Ale by Alfred Provis
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  The Village Schoolmaster by Thomas Brooks
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  The Meeting of Robert of Normandy and Arlotta by Henry Hall Pickersgill
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  Benjamin West's First Effort in Art, engraving based on painting by Edward Matthew Ward
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  Academy for Instruction in the Discipline of the Fan, 1711 by Abraham Solomon
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  Musidora Bathing by Arthur Hughes
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  Arthur and Aegle in the Happy Valley by John Martin
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  Othello's First Suspicion by James Clarke Hook
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  Morning on the Banks of Lake Zurich with Pilgrims by Francis Danby
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  The Lady of the Lake by Alexander Johnston
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  Omnia Vanitas by William Dyce
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  Portrait of James McNeill Whistler by William Boxall
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  Portrait of George Murray by Samuel Lane
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  Portrait of Thomas Brisbane by John Watson Gordon
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  Portrait of John Shaw Lefevre by John Watson Gordon
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  Portrait of John Lee by John Watson Gordon
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  Portrait of Roderick Murchison by Henry William Pickersgill
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  Portrait of Charles Barry by Henry William Pickersgill
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  Portrait of Edward Owen by Henry William Pickersgill
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  Portrait of Thomas Gray by Richard Augustus Clack
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  Portrait of John Bright by John Prescott Knight
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  Portrait of Frederick Pollock by Francis Grant
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  Viscount Hardinge on the Battlefield of Ferozeshah by Francis Grant
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  Portrait of Prince Albert by Frederick Richard Say

Bibliography

• Bailey, Anthony. J.M.W. Turner: Standing in the Sun. Tate Enterprises, 2013.
• Fitzmaurice, Andrew. King Leopold's Ghostwriter: The Creation of Persons and States in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton University Press, 2024.
• Spencer-Longhurst, Paul. The Sun Rising Through Vapour: Turner's Early Seascapes. Third Millennium Information, 2003.
• Van der Merwe, Pieter & Took, Roger. The Spectacular career of Clarkson Stanfield. Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1979.