To the President & Council of the R^o Academy

Sir Francis & Gentlemen
It seems to the
undersigned members of the R^o Academy
undesirable that a notice should
continue to be issued to Exhibitors
which would preclude the hanging of
the Turner pictures now existing if
sent for exhibition under the protection
of glass
Both the Bacchus & Ariadne
by Titian, and the Frosty Morning
by Turner, would be rejected if
painted by living artists and offered
for exhibition, as they now hang in
the National Gallery.
The 2 beautiful Reynolds’.
now exhibited upon our own walls
numbered 63 & 73 would suffer
the like fate, because they also are 

under glass, and it seems to your
memorialists unreasonable to say
the least that a condition which is not
enforced at all in January, should
in the same institution and upon the
same walls become prohibitory
in May.
Your Memorialists therefore
earnestly hope that an arbitrary
rule (made some 30 years ago, before
the value of glass, as a protection to oil
pictures ^{had been thoroughly tested & admitted} superseding the use of
varnish or media, upon recently
painted pictures, which generally proves
their ruin) may now be rescinded
and that the paragraph in your notice
to Exhibitors stating that “Oil

pictures under glass are inadmissible”
be in future omitted
Signed.

J F Lewis
E.W. Cooke
J R Herbert
F R. Pickersgill
G.F. Watts
Tho^s Webster
E.M. Ward
Fred Leighton
Geo Richmond

Signed by
1 Cooke
&
2 Leighton