PREVIOUS ARTISTS OF THE MONTH	Current Artist of the Month Object of the Month
Artist of the Month - July 2007 Sandra Blow RA (1925 - 2006) I have two equal sources of inspiration. One is art, first the Renaissance art I saw in Italy at the same time I saw the work of Alberto Burri and Nicolas Carone... and later African sculpture and, among other painters, Roger Hilton and Morris Louis. The second influence is nature. I marvel at the beauty and construction of the leaves and flowers outside the studio. I love London skies, because they are framed and one sees them almost like a painting. Sandra Blow
Artist of the Month - August 2007 William Cheselden (1688-1752) William Cheselden was a pioneering anatomist and surgeon. In 1733 he published his Osteographia, a comprehensive study of the human skeleton. Every bone in the human body is illustrated in the book, along with a section on bone disease and comparative material on animal skeletons.
Artist of the Month - September 2007 Thomas Gainsborough RA (1727-1788) Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, in 1727. He trained in London under Hubert Gravelot and probably also with Francis Hayman RA. He returned to Suffolk in 1748 and began to make his reputation painting portraits. In 1759 he moved to the fashionable spa town of Bath, where sitters were plentiful enough to allow him to make a lucrative practice.
Artist of the Month - October 2007 Jean Cooke RA (1927-2008) Jean Cooke studied at Central School of Arts and Crafts and at the Royal College of Art. Her first solo exhibition was held at the Establishment Club in 1963. Jean Cooke has painted many portraits of her family and explored her own image through a series of self-portraits, of which the Royal Academy have three in their collection.
Artist of the Month - November 2007 William Quiller Orchardson RA (1832-1910) Born in Edinburgh and trained at the Trustees' Academy in the city. From 1845 onwards he joined a circle of young artists - including William McTaggart, John Pettie and Thomas Graham. After moving to London in 1862 he exhibited at the Royal Academy where his portraits and his paintings of historical and literary subjects were well-received.
Artist of the Month - December 2007 William Owen RA (1769-1825) Owen's career was founded on his reputation as a portraitist. Although he lacked the panache of contemporaries like Sir Thomas Lawrence, he could boast a list of distinguished sitters and a prodigious output. Arriving in 1786, Owen studied with the coach painter Charles Catton RA and also met Sir Joshua Reynolds who was impressed with his work.
Artist of the Month - January 2008 Stanhope Forbes RA (1857-1947) In the later part of the 19th century artists such as Stanhope Forbes settled in Newlyn in Cornwall and were soon referred to as the Newlyn School. Forbes lived there from the early 1880s with other arists who were committed to painting plein-air, or in the open, whenever possible.
Artist of the Month - February 2008 Benjamin West PRA (1738-1820) Benjamin West was born in Pennsylvania and came to London after studying in Italy between 1760 and 1763. He quickly developed an extremely successful practice which included both history painting and portraiture. George III commission a great deal of work from West to decorate his royal palaces, such as Windsor Castle.
Artist of the month - March 2008 Richard Norman Shaw RA (1831-1912) Look around any English city, town or suburb built up between 1880 and 1930 and you will see traces of the ghost of Norman Shaw. Here a flamboyant corner pub with a turret thrusting up blithely into the roofline. All bear the indirect impress of one of the masters of English architecture.
Artist of the month - April 2008 Richard Westall, RA (1765-1836) Richard Westall is best known as a painter of genre works, historical and literary scenes and portraits, including several portraits of Lord Byron, whose poems he illustrated. In the last nine years of his life he was drawing master to Princess Victoria, but by this time his work had fallen out of favour and he died in penury..
Artist of the Month - May 2008 Thomas Webster RA (1800-1886) Webster trained at the Royal Academy Schools from 1821 and gained great popularity in his lifetime for scenes of contemporary rural life. Webster moved to the village of Cranbrook in 1857 and he was soon followed by other artists such as John Callcott Horsley, F.D. Hardy and G.B. O'Neill, so that by the 1860s it was recognised as an artists' colony.
Artist of the Month - June 2008 J. F. Lewis RA (1804-1876) John Frederick Lewis is best known for his glittering scenes of Oriental life depicting men and women in elaborate costumes, set either in decorative interiors, in sunlit deserts or in Cairo's crowded streets. One of the first professional British artists to travel to the Middle East, Lewis spent a decade living in the Egyptian capital where he adopted local dress and inhabited a grand Ottoman house.
Artist of the Month - July 2008 Sir Richard Westmacott RA (1775-1856) Westmacott was an immensely successful sculptor receiving many public and private commissions. He studied from the age of 14 with his grandfather, Thomas Vardy, a furniture carver and then continued his education by travelling to Rome in 1792 and studying antique sculpture for four years. He became well acquainted with the neo-classical sculptor Antonio Canova (1757-1822).
Artist of the Month - August 2008 Robert Walker Macbeth RA (1848-1910) Macbeth painted contemporary scenes of rural and fishing communities as well as historical genre scenes in the manner of William Quiller Orchardson. He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy School before moving to London in 1870 where he began to work for The Graphic and also attended the Royal Academy Schools.
Artist of the Month - September 2008 Thomas Daniell RA (1749-1840) Thomas Daniell attended the Royal Academy Schools before travelling to India with his nephew William. The pair drew and painted many different landscapes and ancient sites during their ten-year stay in India. Upon returning to Britain the Daniells exhibited paintings of India and published Oriental Scenery, a series of aquatints based on their sketches.
Artist of the Month - October 2008 Philip Reinagle RA (1749-1833) The Reinagles were a family of artists and musicians of Hungarian origin. Philip was the eldest child of Joseph and Annie Reinagle and was probably born in Edinburgh where his parents settled after moving to the U.K. At the age of fourteen he was sent to London to become an assistant to the Scottish portraitist Allan Ramsay and he later studied at the newly-founded Royal Academy Schools.
Artist of the Month - November 2008 William Dyce RA (1806-1864) The son of an Aberdeen doctor and lecturer, William Dyce initially followed in his father's footsteps by studying medicine but soon turned his attention to theology and painting. This thorough academic grounding in both science and the humanities had a profound effect on Dyce's later career, distinguishing him as one of the most scholarly artists of his generation.
Artist of the Month - December 2008 Peter Freeth RA (b. 1938) Peter Freeth was born in Birmingham in 1938. He studied etching with Anthony Gross at the Slade School of Fine Art, London, from 1956 to 1960. In 1960 he won the Prix de Rome in Engraving and spent the next three years based in Rome and travelling throughout Italy. Following his return to England he became a tutor in etching at the Royal Academy Schools in 1966, a post he held until 2007.
Artist of the Month - January 2009 Edward Bird RA (1772-1819) Born in Wolverhampton in 1772 to a carpenter and his large family, Bird made a humble entrance into the art world. At age 13 he apprenticed in "japanning" at a local firm, painting tea trays with black varnish to simulate Oriental lacquer. He developed an artistic hand by copying engravings, but had virtually no formal training. During his apprenticeship, Bird sold paintings, earning enough to prompt his move to Bristol and become an independent artist.
Artist of the Month - February 2009 Briton Rivière RA (1840-1920) Briton Rivière came from a family of painters, and before his family moved out of London in 1851, the young Rivière used to draw animals in London zoo. Although Rivière was seen as a successor to Edwin Landseer RA, he did not usually give his animals quasi-human characteristics, but many of his pictures show great sympathy between man and beast and were immensely popular with the Victorian public.
Artist of the Month - March 2009 Sir William Beechey RA (1753-1839) William Beechey entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1774 and his early work included panels for coaches and portraits and small full-lengths. He worked in Norwich and possibly Yarmouth for some time before settling in London in 1787 where he soon built up a thriving portrait practice.
Artist of the Month - April 2009 Henry Tresham RA (ca.1750-1814) Tresham's interest in Roman themes is unsurprising as he lived in city for thirteen years. Born in Ireland, he first studied at the Dublin Society's drawing school but determined to become a history painter rather than a portraitist, Tresham travelled to Italy in 1775.
Artist of the Month - May 2009 William Powell Frith RA (1819-1909) William Powell Frith was an immensely successful and popular Victorian artist, best known for his vivid portrayal of contemporary life, from the hustle and bustle of crowds on Derby Day or the fuss and flurry of passengers boarding a train at Paddington Station to sympathetic portraits of household servants and of close friends.
Artist of the Month - June 2009 Dominic Serres RA (1722-1793) Serres was the only marine painter to be included among the Founder Members of the Royal Academy. He was born in Gascony, France, and despite his parents' wishes for him to join the church, he ran away on to a ship bound for South America. He ended up in Havana, Cuba, where he was taken prisoner by a British frigate and was brought to England in the 1750s.
Artist of the Month - July 2009 Alfred Elmore RA (1815-1881) Elmore was elected a member of the Royal Academy in 1857 and choose to present as his Diploma work a scene from one of Shakespeare's comedies. The mid-19th century saw an increased fascination with Shakespearean subjects.
Artist of the Month - August 2009 Robert Austin RA (1895-1973) Robert Austin was born in Leicester in 1895 and attended the Municipal School of Art there before going on to the Royal College of Art (RCA) in London in 1914. Army service during the First World War interrupted his studies, but in 1919 he resumed them under Sir Frank Short RA (1857-1945), the RCA's great teacher of printmaking who no doubt was the first to set Austin the challenge of taking up the engraver's tools.
Artist of the Month - September 2009 Sir Thomas Brock RA (1847-1922) Sir Thomas Brock's most important commission was the Imperial Memorial to Queen Victoria on the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace. The statue was unveiled in 1911 and George V was so impressed that he knighted Brock on the spot.
Artist of the Month - October 2009 Sir Thomas Lawrence PRA (1769-1830) Thomas Lawrence was one of the finest and most successful portrait painters of his age. He painted with great fluency and this, combined with his inventiveness in composing his portraits, ensured that his influence on future generations of artists was evident well into the 20th century.
Artist of the Month - November 2009 Sir Roger de Grey PRA (1918-1995) De Grey was a nephew of one of the Camden Town Group of painters, Spencer Gore. Although figures are important in his early work, it was landscape that became de Grey's favourite subject, particularly the landscapes around his home in Kent, and also the south-west of France.
Artist of the Month - December 2009 J.M.W. Turner RA (1775-1851) Perhaps the most celebrated of all British artists, J. M. W. Turner dominated landscape painting in this country for the first half of the 19th century and beyond.
Artist of the Month - January 2010 Robert Buhler RA (1916-1989) Green Park is one of a series of cityscapes, which Buhler painted in the 1940s. This wintry view of the Green Park is painted with Buhler's typically muted colouring and soft tonality broken only by the flash of a bold red double-decker bus.
Artist of the Month - February 2010 William Hamilton RA (1751-1801) Vertumnus and Pomona is a depiction of a tale known mainly from Ovid's Metamorphoses. This work represents a shift in Hamilton's work from portraiture to subject pictures.
Artist of the Month - March 2010 Michael 'Angelo' Rooker ARA (1746 - 1801) Rooker is said to have depicted architecture 'as if he loved every brick and stone and was aware of life behind every window'
Artist of the Month - April 2010 Sir Edwin Landseer RA (1802-1873) Landseer made his reputation through depictions of dogs and deer, which he often invested with human characteristics. Queen Victoria was a keen admirer and commissioned him to paint many portraits of the Royal family and their pets.
Artist of the Month - May 2010 William Mulready RA (1786-1863) William Mulready was born in Co. Clare, Ireland but spent most of his life in the Bayswater area of London. A gifted artist from an early age he entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1800.
Artist of the Month - June 2010 David Roberts RA (1796-1864) David Roberts was the first independent British artist to travel and paint extensively in the Near East. His evocative portrayals of ancient monuments and vast desert landscapes brought the topography of Egypt and the 'lands of the Bible' to an appreciative European audience.
Artist of the Month - July 2010 Julian Trevelyan RA (1910-1988) While studying English at Cambridge Trevelyan became acquainted with Surrealist ideas and was fascinated by the human sub-conscious. Over the next 50 years Trevelyan would generate countless imaginative works, but the printmaking medium would dominate.
Artist of the Month - August 2010 Throughout his career Chris Orr has worked in various media, producing countless drawings, paintings and printed works. Early in his twenties, Orr became fascinated with the practice of printmaking because of its experimental qualities, multiple nature and strong connection to books.