The first Royal Academy exhibition was opened to the public in Pall Mall “immediately east of where the United Service Club now stands” (Wheatley) on the 26th of April, 1769. Two years later, the King assigned rooms in Somerset House to the Academy, but his offer was not utilised until the new Somerset House was ready, in 1780. Here the annual exhibitions were held for fifty-eight years. The Academicians then migrated to the eastern half of the National Gallery building in Trafalgar Square. In 1869 the removal to Burlington House was made. The history of the rise and progress of the Royal Academy, which Smith wished might have been undertaken by its secretary, Henry Howard, R.A., has been written very fully by William Sandby, and again recently by the late J. E. Hodgson, R.A., and Mr. F. A. Eaton in collaboration.
[28] In this riot in St. George’s Fields, five or six people were killed by the Guards, and about fifteen wounded.
[29] Henry Fuseli (1741-1825) had come to London in 1763. On presenting himself before Sir Joshua Reynolds, the following dialogue occurred: “How long have you studied in Italy?” “I never studied in Italy—I studied in Zurich—I am a native of Switzerland—do you think I should study in Italy? and, above all, is it worth while?” “Young man, were I the author of these drawings, and were I offered ten thousand a year not to practise as an artist, I would reject the proposal with contempt.”
[30] Dr. John Armstrong, whose poem, “The Art of Preserving Health,” was long famous, is now best remembered as the author of a few stanzas in Thomson’s Castle of Indolence describing the morbid effects of indolence. Haydon writes of Fuseli: “He swore roundly, a habit which he told me he contracted from Dr. Armstrong.”
[31] Sir John Eardley-Wilmot, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, decided several cases arising out of Wilkes’s libels: his reply to Lord North’s extraordinary letter was the only one he could make. In spite of Wilkes’s easy victory at the poll, the House of Commons declared that Colonel Luttrell ought to have been elected, and his name was substituted for Wilkes’s in the return, a proceeding which inflamed the situation.
[32] Henry William Bunbury stands apart from his fellow-caricaturists as a wealthy amateur. He was the second son of the Rev. Sir William Bunbury, Bart., of Great Barton, Suffolk, and married Catherine Horneck, the “Little Comedy” of Goldsmith. Bretherton was an engraver and printseller in Bond Street. He engraved nearly all Bunbury’s drawings, and it was said that he alone could do so with good effect.
[33] For almost a century the exodus of the London citizens to the outlying country was considered fair game for satire. Bunbury’s caricature of 1772 only records the humours which Robert Lloyd had touched in “The Cit’s Country Box,” printed in No. 135 of the Connoisseur.
“The trav’ler with amazement sees
A temple, Gothic or Chinese,
With many a bell and tawdry rag on,