Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
THE SUMMER EXHIBITION
The most famous event in the Royal Academy's calendar is the
Summer Exhibition
, which
has been held annually since 1769, and runs from June to mid-August. It's an odd event:
anyone can enter paintings in any style. Around ten thousand entries are surveyed (at
considerable speed) by the RA's Hanging Committee (great name) and around one thousand
lucky winners get hung, in extremely close proximity, and sold. In addition, the eighty
“Academicians” are allowed to display up to six of their own works - no matter how awful. The
result is a bewildering display, which gets annually panned by the critics. However, with thirty
percent of the purchase price going to the RA, it generates at least £2 million in income.
its own iron railings and courtyard, next door to the Royal Academy. Built in the 1770s
for Lord Melbourne, it was divided in 1802 into a series of self-contained bachelor
“sets” for members of the nearby gentlemen's clubs too drunk to make it home. Only
those who had no connections with trade, and did not keep a musical instrument or a
wife, were permitted to live here, and over the years they have been occupied by such
literary figures as Byron, Gladstone, J.B. Priestley, Aldous Huxley, Patrick Hamilton
and Graham Greene.
3
Royal Academy of the Arts
Burlington House, Piccadilly • Daily 10am-6pm, Fri until 10pm • £10-15 • John Madejski Fine Rooms guided tours Tues 1pm, Wed-Fri 1 &
3pm, Sat 11.30am; free •
T
020 7300 8000,
W
royalacademy.org.uk •
!
Green Park
he
Royal Academy of Arts
occupies Burlington House, one of the few survivors from
the ranks of aristocratic mansions that once lined the north side of Piccadilly.
Rebuilding in the nineteenth century destroyed the original curved colonnades beyond
the main gateway, but the complex has kept the feel of a Palladian
palazzo
. he
academy itself was the country's first formal art school, founded in 1768 by a group of
painters including Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds. Reynolds went on to
become the academy's first president, and his statue now stands in the courtyard,
palette in hand ready to paint the cars hurtling down Piccadilly.
The academy's alumni range from Turner and Constable to Hockney and Tracey
Emin, though the college has always had a conservative reputation for both its
teaching and its shows. As well as hosting exhibitions, the RA has a small selection
of works from its permanent collection in
the white and gold
John Madejski Fine
Rooms
. Highlights include a Rembrandtesque self-portrait by Reynolds, plus works
by the likes of Constable, Hockney and Stanley Spencer. To see the gallery's most
valuable asset, Michelangelo's marble relief, the
Taddei Tondo
, head for the narrow
glass atrium of Norman Foster's Sackler Galleries, at the back of the building.
The Wolseley and the Ritz
On the south side of Piccadilly, on the corner of Arlington Street,
The Wolseley
is a
superb Art Deco building, originally built as a Wolseley car showroom in the 1920s,
now a café (see p.367). The most striking original features are the zigzag inlaid marble
flooring, the chinoiserie woodwork and the giant red Japanese lacquer columns. Across
St James's Street, with its best rooms overlooking Green Park, stands the
Ritz Hotel
,
famous for its afternoon teas (see p.377) and a byword for decadence since it first
wowed Edwardian society in 1906. The hotel's design, with its two-storey French-style
mansard roof and long arcade, was based on the rue de Rivoli in Paris.
Burlington Arcade
Mon-Wed & Fri 8am-6.30pm, Thurs 8am-7pm, Sat 9am-6.30pm, Sun 11am-5pm • Free •
W
burlington-arcade.co.uk •
!
Green Park
Along the side of the Royal Academy runs the
Burlington Arcade
, London's first
shopping arcade, built in 1819 for Lord Cavendish, then owner of Burlington House,
to prevent commoners throwing rubbish into his garden. Today, it's London's longest
