The King's Artists

This is the first scholarly history of Britain's dominant fine art institution from its foundation in 1768 to the beginning of the Victorian age. Holger Hoock places the Royal Academy of Arts in the contexts of the metropolitan, British, and European art worlds and explores its influence on the notion of a national school of art. The story of the Academy in these early years illuminates the complex relationships between art and politics, and allows Hoock to explore the concepts and practices of professionalization, cultural patriotism, and royal and state patronage of the arts in an age of war, revolution, and reform.