The Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts: 200 Years of Social and Artistic Change

Abstract

The Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts:200 Years of Social and Artistic Change John Turpin (bio) For two hundred years visitors to the annual exhibitions of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in Dublin have been attracted by the range of work on view: landscapes, seascapes, scenes of rural and urban life, portraits, still life, abstracts and subject paintings, together with various pieces in three dimensions. However, the RHA and its exhibitions were not aesthetic manifestations in isolation but were located within the complex historical fabric of Irish society. The exhibitions formed a bridge between the artists and their audience. Changes in Irish society and changes in art internationally impacted the RHA. In the twentieth century, as these factors changed significantly, art academies like the RHA acquired a reputation for conservatism and opposition to modernism, which damaged their standing and led to intellectual marginalisation. The bicentenary of the RHA offers an opportunity to review its history and set the Academy in the context of social, economic, political, and artistic change in Ireland. The role of art academies Art academies since the Renaissance were seen as modern and innovative in establishing painting and sculpture as among the liberal arts, akin to poetry, and not simply as manual artisan disciplines subject to guild restrictions. Princely rulers sponsored the establishment of academies of art to teach young artists and as manifestations of royal prestige and an enlightened vision of culture. Furthermore, the Enlightenment ideal of free trade in art in a wider market liberated artists from the restrictions of working for commissions alone. This led to the establishment in the eighteenth century of highly successful regular public art exhibitions with work for sale, as in the Paris Salon and the summer exhibitions of the Royal Academy in London, founded in 1768. Such exhibitions depended on a vibrant capitalist society with wealthy aristocratic and upper middle class collectors. The fusion in the Royal Academy in London of a representative body for professional artists and a shop window for sales and marketing reflected the commercial ideology [End Page 311] of Georgian England. It was the same model for the foundation of the RHA in 1823, despite the very different and less favourable social, economic and political conditions in Ireland. Regular public art exhibitions in Dublin with work for sale were established by the Society of Artists in Ireland in 1764. The Society of Artists was a private organisation that lasted for twenty years. It exhibited in the octagonal gallery it had constructed in South William Street, Dublin, which still exists – now the home of the Irish Georgian Society. These exhibitions ended when the artists lost control of the building as they were unable to complete payments for its construction. This indicated that Ireland was not comparable to London, as it lacked sufficient patronage from a widely based upper and middle class of wealthy collectors to sustain the society and generate significant profits. Just as important, it did not have the patronage of a resident monarch with a permanent court, nor of an established Church interested in commissioning religious subjects apart from portraits. Various short-lived exhibition sequences followed in Dublin. Individual artists were facilitated by the Dublin Society (later RDS), which lent them its gallery temporarily for exhibitions. The Dublin Society with its drawing schools trained many of the artists who were to be prominent subsequently when the RHA was founded, but its own focus remained on teaching skills, not exhibiting works of art for sale. The Irish artists lacked a corporate legal existence like the Royal Academy (RA) in London. Thus they lacked the power to own property corporately and the prestige to attract patronage. With the end of the long wars against France in 1815, there was throughout the UK (of which Ireland was then an integral part), a great surge of energy and optimism leading to the establishment of scientific and cultural societies in many cities, especially in the north of England. From 1820 a group of Irish artists realised that they needed an academy as a corporate body under royal patronage to represent them and to maintain an annual art exhibition in which to sell work and to run a school of...