The Making of an Artist: The Great Tradition
The Collection Gallery, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts
Now on
The Making of an Artist: The Great Tradition
Does great art begin with studying nature, or studying the great art of the past? Decide for yourself in this new gallery, bringing together highlights from the RA Collection.
What makes great art? Our first President, Sir Joshua Reynolds, believed that the art of the past was the most important source of inspiration, but this was challenged by later Academicians like JMW Turner and John Constable. Although both still included references to historic art in their work, they also drew inspiration from nature, spending long hours capturing the world they saw around them. The Making of an Artist: The Great Tradition presents the people who founded the RA, their ideas about art, and how those ideas changed over the next 50 years.
The gallery includes many of the RA’s exemplars of earlier art, including an almost full-size 16th-century copy of Leonardo’s Last Supper, casts of key classical sculptures – most notably the Belvedere Torso – and Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo, the only marble sculpture by Michelangelo in Great Britain. It also shows the results of Constable’s determination to work from nature, including several of his cloud studies, and Turner’s Dolbadern Castle, given to the RA on his election as a Royal Academician.
The display is curated by the current President of the RA, painter Christopher Le Brun, who observes that when the RA was founded, the main carrier of ideas in art was the nude male figure, but in the hands of Constable, the main carrier of meaning became “the stuff of nature”, including the most transient effects such as clouds and passing rain showers.
From 19 May 2018
Daily 10am – 6pm
Friday 10am – 10pm
The Collection Gallery, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts
Free
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![Smartify in use in the Collection Gallery]()
Try Smartify in the galleries
Learn more about each work, or take a tour
During your visit, you can use the Smartify app app with your smartphone or tablet camera to “scan” the artworks in The Great Tradition and discover the stories behind them.
Look out for Mary Beard’s mythology trail in Smartify too: the historian tells the stories behind key classical works around the RA. Works included in the trail are marked on labels on the walls.
Smartify is available to download for free through the Android and Apple app stores.
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![Unknown artist and Rosso Fiorentino and Michelangelo Buonarroti, Leda and the swan]()
Michelangelo as Muse
19 May – 16 September 2018
The Cabinet
This small display of works on paper in the Cabinet looks at the influence of Michelangelo on the artists that came after him, including John Constable, who declared his Tondo to be “one of the most beautiful works of art in existence”.
It includes Constable’s own tiny sketch of the work, an early copy of Leda and the Swan and several other drawings after Michelangelo.
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Gallery
![Angelica Kauffman RA, Design]()
![John Constable RA, Seascape Study: Boat and Stormy Sky]()
![John Constable RA, Cloud Study: Horizon of Trees]()
![Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John]()
Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John, ca. 1504-05.
![J.M.W. Turner RA, Dolbadern Castle, North Wales]()
![, Cast of Belvedere Torso]()
![Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA, Satan summoning his Legions]()
![Pupils of Leonardo and Giampietrino and Marco D' Oggiono and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, The Last Supper]()
Pupils of Leonardo and Giampietrino and Marco D' Oggiono and Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, The Last Supper, ca. 1515-1520.
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![Angelica Kauffman RA, Design (detail)]()
The Making of an Artist
The Making of an Artist encompasses three new displays of the RA Collection, exploring ideas about what makes great art and art training. In addition to The Great Tradition, you’ll find:
Learning to Draw
The Vaults
The RA has always had an art school. This display illustrates how art has been taught here over the past 250 years and gives a glimpse of what happens now.Learning about Architecture
Dorfman Architecture Court
Aspiring architects in the 18th-century RA Schools honed their craft by copying casts taken from classical buildings. This display brings those casts together, revealing another aspect of traditional artistic training.
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The RA is a charity, run by artists and funded by art-lovers. Your donation supports our future, to continue to create, debate and exhibit great works of art and to champion art and artists.
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