THE EXHIBITION OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY


Notes on the text


'The Exhibition of the Royal Academy', published in Bentley's Miscellany in June 1851, is a review of the annual Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. It followed 'A Pictorial Tour to St. George Bosherville' - a comic account of a painting trip to a French town with his friend Charles Ward - and after it Collins wrote three accounts of famous picture collections in English houses as well as 'A Passage in the Life of Mr Perugino Potts' which in some ways is a spoof of his own biography of his father, the artist William Collins RA. Unlike Collins's first two pieces for Bentley's Miscellany 'The Exhibition of the Royal Academy' was unsigned. It has never been republished until now.

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In 1851 the Royal Academy occupied the eastern wing of what is now the National Gallery. It can be seen in the Tissot painting above, Visitors to London which shows the eastern front of the building with the church, St Martin's in the Fields, in the background. The Royal Academy of Arts was founded in 1768 and held its first annual exhibition of paintings the following year. It occupied various sites including one in Pall Mall and rooms in the splendid Somerset House on The Strand but in 1837 a new building was completed on the northern side of Trafalgar Square, opposite St Martin in the Fields, to house the National Gallery; the Royal Academy was given five rooms in the eastern wing. However, the space proved too small and in 1850 the search was begun for other accommodation. The Academy moved to its present location in Burlington House, Piccaddilly in 1869. The picture below, by William Logsdail, shows St Martin's Place, the street running between the Eastern Wing of the National Gallery and St Martin's in the Fields, in the early 1970s.
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In 1851 Wilkie Collins - aged 27 - was still living with his mother at 17 Hanover Terrace and was technically studying to be a barrister. His three published books had been well received and were moderately successful, but hardly entitled Collins to call himself a writer. The Census entry of 30 March 1851 describes him as 'law student'. His younger brother Charles - now 23 - by contrast was described as 'artist' and was competent enough to have his work exhibited at the Royal Academy. Through his family connections, Wilkie moved all his life in artistic circles. Most of the 80 artists mentioned in this piece would have been known to him; many were close friends. Collins shamelessly uses the cloak of anonymity to praise their work.

Today, few of the artists or pictures mentioned in this review will be familiar to any but scholars of nineteenth century art. But of those that are, most were Collins's friends. Holman Hunt, founder of the Pre-Raphaelite movement which ultimately rejected Charles Collins as a member, was a close friend of the Collins family and Wilkie used his family background in his fourth published novel Hide and Seek. Millais, another Pre-Raphaelite founder and later president of the Royal Academy, painted Collins's portrait in 1850 and was another lifelong friend. So was William Frith who painted Ramsgate Sands - a Collins family holiday haunt - in 1853. Edward Ward, brother of Charles, was also a close friend and the groom in a scandalous marriage in 1848 which Wilkie arranged. Augustus Egg introduced Wilkie to Dickens and the three of them went to Europe in 1853. Although highly praised at the time - and not just by Wilkie - his brother Charles is now remembered only as a footnote to the Pre-Raphaelite movement and for the picture reviewed here, Convent Thoughts. Wilkie also knew well William Clarkson Stanfield who painted the scenery for many of Dickens's amateur theatricals including the production of Collins's play The Lighthouse and The Frozen Deep, which he wrote with Dickens. There were also connections with James Linnell - a friend and neighbour from Porchester Terrace where Wilkie lived as a boy; Sir Edwin Landseer - invited to dinner to celebrate the serialisation of The Moonstone in 1868; and Dickens's friend Daniel Maclise.

conven.JPG - 36KbCollins spends a great deal of his review praising and examining the work of his closer friends. More than a page is devoted to Hunt, Millais, and his brother Charles - his painting Convent Thoughts is shown on the left. He also heaps praise on work by Egg, Frith, Landseer, Stanfield, and Ward. Catherine Peters in her biography of Collins suggests that the piece shows his preference for the more traditional paintings, in which his father excelled, and that his lengthy and detailed attention to the work of his Pre-Raphaelite friends was an attempt to bring them back to those ways. His criticisms were certainly mild compared to those in the press. The Times thundered against the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)

"We cannot censure at present as amply or as strongly as we desire to do, that strange disorder of the mind or the eyes, which continues to rage with unabated absurdity among a class of juvenile artists who style themselves the PRB.""


Collins's own insults for the paintings he did not like were more entertaining.

"It proclaims its own mediocrity too palpably to need any remark whatever on our part"

"Not even by accident does he seem to have hit upon anything original"

"three more intensely uninteresting men than these...we never saw on canvas."

"the artist will best show his reverence for sacred things by never again attempting a Scripture subject."

"Of the portraits this year...it would be most charitable to say as little as possible."

And occasionally he lapses into pomposity as in these comments on Ford Madox Brown's Chaucer reading the Legend of Custance to Edward the Third

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"We hope to see Mr Brown doing more justice to his own industry and intelligence on a future occasion."

'The Exhibition of the Royal Academy' was the third of nine full-length pieces which Wilkie Collins wrote for Bentley's Miscellany between March 1851 and August 1852. Richard Bentley had already published Collins's first novel Antonina in 1850 and went on to publish his four subsequent books (Bentley also published four more in the 1870s). Apart from 'The Last Stage Coachman' published in 1843, Collins's work in Bentley's Miscellany is his earliest known periodical material, though he certainly published other items which are still unidentified.

The receipts for all his pieces for the periodical are held by the British Library and are initialled 'W.W.C.' in what looks like Collins's hand. Wilkie was paid £6-18s (£6.90) for the 10.75 pages of 'The Exhibition of the Royal Academy'. The standard rate of pay at Bentley's Miscellany was ten guineas per sixteen pages - in an octavo volume sixteen pages formed one 'sheet' - eight printed on one side and eight on the other. In fact he was paid slightly less for 'The Exhibition' - the amount would be at that rate for 10.5 pages. Each full page contains almost 600 words, the total count for this piece being 6100 - so he was paid around £1-2s-6d (£1.125) for each 1000 words. At the time, a skilled worker such as a carpenter could expect to earn about £1-4s (£1.20) for working a 60 hour week. Wilkie was paid his fee in cash about two weeks after the publication date which was the first of each month. The payment of £6-18s for 'The Exhibition' is recorded 'June 16/51 By cash'.

Introduction, version 1.155, making further minor corrections, 10 February 1999

text of piece
list of artists and works reviewed


All material on these pages is © Paul Lewis 1999