Mark Pomeroy, Archivist, writes: Rowlandson's satire on the experience of visiting the Royal Academy's exhibition at Somerset House is very well known and has been reproduced in all major publications on the history of the Royal Academy, but the hand-coloured etching itself is very rare. The only impression in a UK public collection is held by the British Museum, and the only public collections in the US to own impressions are the Metropolitan Museum in New York and Princeton University. The original watercolour by Rowlandson is at the Yale Center for British Art.
The institution’s home at New Somerset House had been designed by Sir William Chambers RA and opened in 1780. Chambers conceived the building as an ascent to the ‘Parnassus’ of the Great Room on the top floor which hosted the main part of the exhibition each year. But the elegant staircase which he designed to fit into the semi-circular space was notoriously steep and narrow. Rowlandson uses the staircase to take aim at the high-minded rhetoric of the Academy, striking a contrast with the decidedly earth-bound experience of the average exhibition visitor; contemporary press reports frequently characterised the exhibition as a site of almost febrile social uncertainty. Rowlandson was in a good position to pass comment, as he had sustained a close relationship to the institution during the earliest phase of his career. The RA Archive contains a letter by his aunt, Jane Rowlandson, dating from 1772 and seeking his entry to draw in the Duke of Richmond's sculpture gallery, his name appears in the RA Schools’ register that same year and as a student he would have consulted books and prints in the Royal Academy, many of which remain in its possession. Between 1775 and 1787 Rowlandson was a frequent exhibitor in the exhibition and doubtless an even more frequent visitor throughout his life.
It is unsurprising that the Royal Academy chose not to procure a work of such biting satire upon its original publication. But, given that it was produced by a former student and that it engages directly with the institution’s reputation and early history, this etching is a highly significant acquisition for the Royal Academy’s Library, Archives and Collection. One of the three strands of our collecting today relates to the Academy’s institutional history and social and cultural context. The acquisition of the Stare Case complements our collection as, in addition to archival material, it joins an important group of paintings, watercolours, drawings, and prints depicting the Academy and its premises in the late 18th and early 19th century by artists including E F Burney, Johann Zoffany and James Gillray. Our Library and Archive holdings are regularly consulted by scholars of the 18th century and beyond, as well as current staff and students of the Royal Academy. A sophisticated on-line catalogue, with an ever-increasing selection of images, allows a global audience remote access to our holdings.
