Royal Academy Exhibition of 1849

The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1849 was the eighty first edition of the annual Summer Exhibition staged by the British Royal Academy of Arts. It took place at the National Gallery in London from 7 May to 28 July 1849, featuring submissions from prominent artists, sculptors and architects of the early Victorian era. It was noted for the emergence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.^[1]

While John Everett Millais had first displayed a work at the Academy in 1846, this was his debut painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style with Isabella, a scene inspired by the poem of the same title by John Keats. William Holman Hunt's Rienzi was drawn from the novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Another member of the Brotherhood James Collinson's Italian Image Makers at a Roadside Alehouse attracted much less attention. These were not the first ever exhibitions of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, as Dante Gabriel Rossetti had already submitted The Girlhood of Mary Virgin to the Free Exhibition of Modern Art at Hyde Park Corner which opened in March. Rossetti had originally planned to send the work to the Royal Academy but chose the smaller, juryless Free Exhibition instead.^[2]

It was the penultimate appearance of the veteran J.M.W. Turner who had been exhibiting at the Royal Academy for many decades. He submitted a single work The Wreck Buoy, a reworking of a much earlier painting that he had added significant amounts of colour to enhance its brightness.^[3]

In portraiture Henry Wyndham Phillips painted the exiled Austrian statesman Metternich which resembled the much earlier Klemens von Metternich by Thomas Lawrence.^{[4] [5]}

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  Rienzi by William Holman Hunt
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  The Wreck Buoy by J.M.W. Turner
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  Italian Image Makers at a Roadside Alehouse by James Collinson
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  Tilbury Fort - Wind Against Tide by Clarkson Stanfield
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  The Desert by Edwin Landseer
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  The Forester's Family by Edwin Landseer
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  Drawing for the Militia by John Phillip
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  Landing a Salmon by Frederick Richard Lee
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  Life's Illusions by George Frederic Watts
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  The Crochet Worker by William Etty
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  The See-Saw by Thomas Webster
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  Omnia Vanitas by William Dyce
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  Portrait of Thomas Brisbane by John Watson Gordon
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  Portrait of Roderick Murchison by Henry William Pickersgill
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  Portrait of Charles Barry by Henry William Pickersgill
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  Portrait of Edward Owen by Henry William Pickersgill
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  Portrait of John Bright by John Prescott Knight
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  Portrait of Frederick Pollock by Francis Grant
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  Portrait of Prince Albert by Frederick Richard Say

• Bailey, Anthony. J.M.W. Turner: Standing in the Sun. Tate Enterprises, 2013.
• Fitzmaurice, Andrew. King Leopold's Ghostwriter: The Creation of Persons and States in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton University Press, 2024.
• Spencer-Longhurst, Paul. The Sun Rising Through Vapour: Turner's Early Seascapes. Third Millennium Information, 2003.
• Van der Merwe, Pieter & Took, Roger. The Spectacular career of Clarkson Stanfield. Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1979.