Royal Academy Exhibition of 1877

The Yeoman of the Guard by John Everett Millais

The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1877 was the hundred and ninth annual Summer Exhibition staged by the British Royal Academy of Arts. It was held at Burlington House in London from 7 May to 6 August and attracting over 300,000 visitors. It featured submissions from many of the leading artists and architects of the Victorian era, but came at a time when the Academy was facing a challenge from new art exhibitions such as the rival Grosvenor Gallery in Bond Street.

Edwin Long's Orientalist painting An Egyptian Feast was one of the most discussed and popular works on display. Another work that attracted particular attention was the sculpture An Athlete Wrestling with a Python by Frederic Leighton, better known as a painter who would succeed Francis Grant as President of the Royal Academy the following year.

John Everett Millais displayed The Yeoman of the Guard featuring a portrait of a veteran Beefeater. The Dutch artist Lawrence Alma-Tadema exhibited The Seasons, a series of four paintings depicting the seasons. George Dunlop Leslie showed The Lass of Richmond Hill, which he had recently presented as his diploma work on election to the Royal Academy. Edward Matthew Ward displayed the history paintings William III at Windsor and The Last Interview Between Napoleon and Queen Louisa of Prussia at Tilsit, a scene from the Napoleonic Wars. The French artist Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux displayed The Battle of Alma, inspired by the Crimean War.

Gallery

• 
  The Music Lesson by Frederic Leighton
• 
  The Sound of Many Waters by John Everett Millais
• 
  An Egyptian Feast by Edwin Long
• 
  Amy Robsart by William Frederick Yeames
• 
  The Lass of Richmond Hill by George Dunlop Leslie
• 
  Cowslips by George Dunlop Leslie
• 
  The Hop Picker by Charles Edward Perugini
• 
  William III at Windsor by Edward Matthew Ward
• 
  The Fortune Teller by Edward Poynter
• 
  Hunted Down by John Pettie
• 
  Harmony by Frank Bernard Dicksee
• 
  Alice by Henry Tanworth Wells
• 
  The Judgment of Paris by George Adolphus Storey
• 
  Word From the Missing by James Clarke Hook
• 
  The Gull Catcher by James Clarke Hook
• 
  The Home of the Red Deer by Richard Ansdell
• 
  Cromwell at Marston Moor by Ernest Crofts
• 
  The Tumult in the House of Commons, 1629 by Andrew Carrick Gow
• 
  The Father of the Regiment by George Bernard O'Neill
• 
  Home They Brought Her Warrior Dead by Philip Hermogenes Calderon
• 
  Silkworms by Eyre Crowe
• 
  To the Death by John Pettie
• 
  Cardinal Wolsey at Leicester Abbey by John Gilbert
• 
  A Bit of Blue by Henry Stacy Marks
• 
  Hope Deferred by Charles West Cope
• 
  In Time of War by Thomas Faed
• 
  A Runaway Horse by Thomas Faed
• 
  The Dove by George Frederic Watts
• 
  Critics on Costume, Fashions Change by John Callcott Horsley
• 
  The World Forgetting, By the World Forgot by John Callcott Horsley
• 
  The Street and Mosque Al Ghouri in Cairo by John Frederick Lewis
• 
  A Golden Daydream (1877) by Emily Mary Osborn
• 
  The Fruit Seller by Philip Hermogenes Calderon
• 
  A Reader by Albert Joseph Moore
• 
  A Nautical Argument by Charles Napier Hemy
• 
  Ironsides Returning from Sacking a Cavalier's House by Ernest Crofts
• 
  On the Medway, Breezy March by John Buxton Knight
• 
  Digging for Bait by Charles William Wyllie
• 
  Going Home by Frank Holl
• 
  Between Hope and Fear by Lawrence Alma-Tadema
• 
  Sir Joshua Reynolds Visiting Goldsmith in His Study by John Faed
• 
  A Legend of Saint Patrick by Briton Riviere
• 
  Edric the Fisherman Presents a Fish as a Token from Saint Peter on the Consecration of Westminster Abbey by Andrew Benjamin Donaldson
• 
  The Dragon's Cavern by Paul Falconer Poole
• 
  Serf Emancipation by Edward Armitage
• 
  Dartmoor Drift by Arthur James Stark
• 
  The Misdeal by Frederick Daniel Hardy
• 
  Still Waters Run Deep by Edward Henry Fahey
• 
  The School Belles by Frederick Morgan
• 
  A Sick Child brought into the Temple of Aesculapius by John William Waterhouse
• 
  Captain Absolute's Introduction to Lydia Languish by William Maw Egley
• 
  The Queen of the Swords, oil sketch by William Quiller Orchardson
• 
  A Lady of the Seventeenth Century by John Pettie
• 
  Der Bittgang by Hubert von Herkomer
• 
  Yes by John Everett Millais
• 
  Study at a Reading Desk by Frederic Leighton
• 
  Portrait of Risaldar Muhammed Afzul Khan by Sydney Prior Hall
• 
  Portrait of George Nares by Stephen Pearce
• 
  Portrait of John Shepherd Birley by Daniel Macnee
• 
  Portrait of Edward Stuart Talbot by George Richmond
• 
  Portrait of John Steell by Norman Macbeth
• 
  Portrait of Dorothy Tennant by George Frederic Watts
• 
  Portrait of Victoria, Princess Royal by Heinrich von Angeli
• 
  Miss Mabel Mills by Frederic Leighton
• 
  An Athlete Wrestling with a Python by Frederic Leighton

Bibliography

• Barlow, Paul. Time Present and Time Past: The Art of John Everett Millais. Routledge, 2017.
• Grand-Clément, Adeline & Ribeyrol, Charlotte (ed.) The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.
• Dafforne, James. The Life and Works of Edward Matthew Ward. Virtue and Company, 1879.