Council minutes. vol. 23

1 vol, 538pp.

Volume of minutes of the Council, including the following selected entries: report of correspondence with the editor of the Jewish Chronicle over a painting in the summer exhibition entitled ‘Finance’ by Edgar Bundy, which the editor condemned as being racially prejudiced, 13 May – 12 June 1913; a note of actions of suffragettes in the Royal Academy, and of precautions taken against further incidents, 12 June 1913; resolution to install a telephone in the office, 18 November 1913; list of questions put at interview to candidates for the post of Secretary, 2 December 1913; note of a Special Committee’s report on the appointment of a Surveyor, 11 December 1913; memorandum to the Board of Education setting out the Royal Academy’s opposition to a proposal by the Minister of Education for the creation of a central school of fine art, 26 February 1914; the measures taken following the serious attacks by suffragettes on the portraits of ‘Henry James’ by John Singer Sargent and ‘The Duke of Wellington’ by Sir Hubert von Herkomer, and the painting ‘Primavera’ by Sir George Clausen in the summer exhibition, 4, 12 and 26 May 1914; report of discussions and measures adopted following the outbreak of World War One, 8 and 22 October 1914, including the report of the Committee appointed to discuss the holding of a special exhibition during the winter for the benefit of distressed artists and some other public fund, such as the Red Cross; copies of correspondence with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings relating to a proposal to appeal to the Secretary of State for War to ensure that British and allied troops should respect works of art and historic buildings in Germany, including a reply from the President, Sir Edward Poynter, strongly deprecating the appeal as an insult to the British Army, 22 October 1914; the defence by Sir Reginald Blomfield in the form of a letter to The Morning Post, of the Royal Academy’s administration of the Chantrey Bequest, following a recommendation by a committee of the trustees of the National Gallery that the fund should be transferred to the Tate Gallery, 11 May 1915; correspondence with the Board of Education deferring further discussion about advanced instruction in fine art until there was a return to normal conditions, 1 July 1915; special meeting to consider the report of the Ways and Means Committee on the making of financial retrenchments, 30 July 1915; conditions set by the Council for loan of galleries for the use of the joint war committee of the British Red Cross Society and the order of St John of Jerusalem, 14 October 1915; conditions of the competition to design a statue of Sir Joshua Reynolds in the courtyard of Burlington House, 10 April 1916; a special meeting to discuss a proposal by the Imperial Arts League to protest to the government about the composition of the board of trustees of the Tate Gallery, 15 June 1917; recommendations by the Tate Gallery committee on improving the method of selecting works for purchase under the Chantrey Fund, 24 July 1917 and the opinion of the Royal Academy’s solicitors on the proposals, 7 August 1917; report of the Surveyor on the damage caused to Gallery XI and the Schools by a bomb dropped from an enemy aircraft, 5 October 1917; and note of a meeting at the National Gallery with representatives of the Tate Gallery trustees to discuss the administration of the Chantrey Fund, 11 December 1917, and special meeting of Council to discuss the report of the Joint Committee on the fund, 25 February 1918.