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Description: | Established at the time of the AcademyÃ's foundation in 1768 to serve the needs of the Members of the Royal Academy and students in its Schools, the Library is the oldest institutional fine arts library in the United Kingdom. It has built up significant collections of books and archives, prints, drawings and photographs relating to British art and the history of the Academy, its Members, Schools, exhibitions and collections since the mid-18th century.
BRITISH ART REFERENCE COLLECTION
comprising around 30,000 monographs, exhibition catalogues and standard reference books on British art and artists, with particular concentration on the life and work of RA Members. Includes a complete set of the AcademyÃ's annual (summer) exhibition catalogues from its inception in 1769 and of loan exhibition catalogues from 1870
HISTORIC BOOK COLLECTION
contains some 12,000 volumes published before 1920, reflecting the teaching philosophy of the Academy Schools from their foundation to the end of the 19th century. It includes many rare titles reproducing the masterpieces of medieval and post-Renaissance European art and architecture; detailed archaeological surveys of the civilisations of ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt; volumes of engravings recording civil, military and religious festivals, ceremonies and costume; and original editions of virtually all the early treatises on painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, printmaking, anatomy, perspective, colour theory, art collecting and connoisseurship.
ILLUSTRATED BOOK COLLECTION
Mny British artists, including RA members, have worked as book illustrators and/or designers; to highlight their contribution a special collection of illustrated books is currently being formed which presently numbers around 1,500 volumes.
ARCHIVES
One of the worldÃ's most significant resources for the historical study of British art since 1760, documenting the activities of an institution that became a national arbiter of taste throughout the 19th century, acting as the primary venue for the exhibition of contemporary art and continuing to this day to run the oldest school of fine art in the country. The archive forms the recorded memory of the AcademyÃ's membership and activities. In addition to the official archive it includes the personal papers of deceased artists and the institutional archives of other organisations such as the Society of Artists.
PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTION
consists of about 1,800 19th & 20th century photographs of Academicians, landscapes, architecture and works of art. Holdings include early portraits by William Lake Price dating from the 1850s, portraits by David Wilkie Wynfield and Eadweard Muybridge's Animal Locomotion: An Electrophotographic investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movement 1872-1885.
- | Subjects: | Artists | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | FAX: | 020 7300 8001 | Telephone: | 020 7300 8000 | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:6031 | Go to resource |
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