PREVIOUS OBJECTS OF THE MONTH	Current Object of the Month Artist of the Month
Object of the Month - July 2007 Polychrome écorché figure, plaster cast, probably 1771 This striking but gruesome figure was probably cast from the flayed corpse of an executed criminal, under the direction of William Hunter (1718-1783). A pioneering surgeon, obstetrician and art collector, Hunter was the first Professor of Anatomy at the Royal Academy Schools from 1768 and used flayed, or écorché, figures like this one as teaching aids
Object of the Month - August 2007 David Hockney RA, (b. 1937), Double Study for 'A Closer Grand Canyon', oil on canvas, 1998 These two canvases are a study for a panoramic work, A Closer Grand Canyon, which was made up of 96 individual canvases and painted in 1998. In this work Hockney explained that in depicting the Grand Canyon it wasn't the geology of the place that attracted him but its space.
Object of the Month - September 2007 Sir John Arnesby Brown RA, (1866-1955), The Raincloud, oil on canvas, ca. 1915 When The Raincloud was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1915 it was described as 'vigorous' and 'most convincing in its power'.
Object of the Month - October 2007 Prince Hoare, Portrait of John Opie RA, pastel on paper, ca. 1790s Speak, Muse, who form'd that matchless head, The Cornish boy, in tin-mines bred; Whose native genius, like his diamonds, shone In secret, till chance gave him to the sun? (Peter Pindar, 1782)
Object of the Month - November 2007 Sir Jeffry Wyatville RA, Design for a Mansion for the First Earl of Yarborough, Brocklesby Park, Lincolnshire: aerial perspective, pencil, pen and wash on paper, 1824 Although this great country house was not built, Jeffry Wyatville must have considered its design of great personal and professional importance in order to present this drawing as his Diploma Work to the Royal Academy.
Object of the Month - December 2007 Allen Jones RA, Spice Island, monoprint, 1986 Jones's art takes as its subject the interrelation between male and female figures. His themes have included circus dancers, nightclubs, the stage, parties, the artist and model, and the pianist and performer.
Object of the Month - January 2008 John Rocque, Plan du Jardin et Vuë des Maisons de Chiswick, Line-engraving, 1736 This elegantly engraved plan by the Huguenot surveyor and map-maker John Rocque shows Lord Burlington's celebrated gardens at his country villa in Chiswick shortly after they were first laid out in the early 1730s.
Object of the month - February 2008 Thomas Banks RA, Portrait of John Malin, chalk on laid paper on canvas, ca. 1768-69 John Malin was the first Porter and a model at the Royal Academy of Arts. Malin was well-known amongst London artists as he had previously fulfilled the same dual role at the Saint Martin's Lane Academy.
Object of the Month - March 2008 Richard Redgrave RA, The Outcast, oil on canvas, 1851 The Outcast shows an unmarried mother and her innocent child being cast out of the respectable family home by her father.
Object of the Month - April 2008 John Bellany RA, The Pianist Entertains, oil on canvas, 1987 Two great subjects have influenced and preoccupied Bellany throughout his life. The first is the sea, and the second is religion.
Object of the Month - May 2008 Tristram Hillier RA, Ligneyrac, Corrèze, oil on canvas, 1964 Depicting the church and cross at Ligneyrac, a small village in the department of Corrèze in central France, it typifies Tristram Hillier's elegant and sharply-defined style of painting.
Object of the Month - June 2008 Revd. Matthew William Peters RA, (1742-1814), Children, oil on canvas, 1777 The abundance of fuit and flowers and the rich colouring in this painting are reminiscent of the Venetian School of painting which Peters greatly admired.
Object of the Month - July 2008 Henry William Pickersgill RA (1782-1875), The Oriental Love Letter, oil on canvas, 1824 The subject matter of The Oriental Love Letter reflects a growing interest in the East in the first half of the 19th century and particularly in scenes from the harem which greatly intrigued the Victorian public.
Object of the Month - August 2008 Francesco Zuccarelli RA, (1702-1788), Self-portrait, chalks on laid paper, 1736 or 1738 When he drew this self-portrait, Francesco Zuccarelli was already an established artist, known for his paintings of pastoral landscapes. Born in Pitigliano, Tuscany, he studied in Rome before settling in Venice in the early 1730s.
Object of the Month - September 2008 Anna Alma-Tadema (1869-1943), The Drawing Room, Townshend House, watercolour, 10 September 1885 This highly intricate watercolour shows one of a suite of ornate drawing rooms in the artist's home, Townshend House in Regent's Park, London. This was the studio-house of the Dutch painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema RA (1836-1912) and his family, in which he created a set of extravagant interiors. Anna Alma-Tadema painted this watercolour while still a teenager, demonstrating a precocious talent for close observation and jewel-like colouring.
Object of the Month - October 2008 John Singer Sargent RA (1856-1925), An Interior in Venice, oil on canvas, 1899 The setting for this painting is the salon of the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice. The sitters are Mr and Mrs Daniel Curtis (on the right) and their Son Ralph, a close friend of Sargent and his wife (on the left). The expatriate American family were the leading social lights of the Anglo-Venetian community, and often entertained artists and writers, amongst them Henry James who used the Palazzo as a setting for Wings of a Dove (1902). Sargent stayed there for the summer of 1899.
Object of the Month - November 2008 Basil Beattie RA, Never Before, oil and wax on flax, 2001 Although the influence of American abstract expressionist painters was strong on Beattie's work, he continued to make reference to the visible world. From the 1980s this often took the form of spatial components such as steps, doors, tunnels or shapes which resembled ziggurats. These paintings explored abstract pictorial spaces and the associated feelings that they engendered.
Object of the Month - December 2008 Solomon J. Solomon, RA (1860-1927), St. George, oil on canvas, ca.1906 The subject of St. George has always been a popular choice among artists but was espcially so after the Boer War (1899-1902) when images of chivalric gallantry were well received by the English public.
Object of the Month - January 2009 Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema RA (1836-1912), Miss Anna Alma-Tadema, oil on canvas, 1883 Born in Holland in 1836, Lawrence Alma-Tadema studied in Antwerp under the artist-archaeologist Louis De Taye and painter Baron Henri Leys before moving to England in 1870. This portrait shows his daughter Anna, aged 15, in the family home, Townshend House. She stands looking towards the hallway with her back to the area where her step-mother's studio and the conservatory were located.
Object of the Month - February 2009 Samuel Ware (1781-1860), Design, almost as executed, for the Great Staircase, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, 27 March 1817. In 1818 the Regency architect Samuel Ware completed the Great Staircase of Burlington House. The work was part of his extensive three-year rebuilding of the house for its new owner, Lord George Cavendish; this included a new garden-side façade and many of the grandly decorated chambers that we still admire today as the John Madejski Fine Rooms.
Object of the Month - March 2009 Benjamin West PRA, Death on the Pale Horse, 1783 (retouched 1803) pen and brown ink with wash and gouache This striking drawing of the Apocalypse is Benjamin West's first version of Death on the Pale Horse. He originally developed the composition as part of a commission from King George III to paint a cycle of religious scenes for a new chapel at Windsor Castle.
Object of the Month - April 2009 Robert Buhler RA, Portrait of John Davenport, oil on board, 1960 'a splendidly positive, and powerful portrait of a powerful and positive man' was how Muriel Julius described Robert Buhler's portrait of his friend John Davenport when it was first shown in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1960
Object of the Month - May 2009 Portrait of Samuel Johnson after Sir Joshua Reynolds, engraved by James Watson, 1770 This mezzotint is after a painting by Samuel Johnson's dear friend Sir Joshua Reynolds. It dates from 1769, and is one of several paintings Reynolds produced of his friend. This particular portrait shows Johnson in a characteristic pose; he was afflicted by compulsive movements and tics throughout his life.
Object of the Month - June 2009 Mick Rooney RA, Shangri-la, 1990, acrylic and oil on card, 1990 Shangri-la, 1990 is typical of Rooney's work with its crowded, heaving host of imagined characters painted with great warmth and humour which creates a striking, magical atmosphere. The bustling figures within the painting are both vivid and unusual, resembling the Commedia dell`arte troupes of 15th and 16th century Italy
Object of the Month - July 2009 Edward Bawden, RA, Lindsell Church, Essex, watercolour, 1956 Edward Bawden's watercolour of Lindsell Church, Essex evokes the atmosphere of a stormy day with occasional shafts of light breaking through the clouds onto the medieval building. Lindsell is situated near Great Bardfield, where the artist lived.
Object of the Month - August 2009 James Gunn RA, Pauline Waiting, oil on canvas, 1939 Throughout his career Gunn received a wealth of commissions from eminent field-marshals, politicians, academicians, judges. His second wife, Pauline, was the inspiration and model however for some of his best known works.
Object of the Month - September 2009 Edmund Evans, after Clarkson Stanfield RA, The Abandoned, wood engraving, 1868 This wood-engraving reproduces a celebrated missing masterpiece by the great marine artist Clarkson Stanfield whom the eminent Victorian critic John Ruskin rated second only to J.M.W. Turner as the 'English Vandevelde'.
Object of the Month - October 2009 Peter Coker RA (1926-2004), Sheep Carcases on a Bench, oil on board, 1955 Peter Coker painted a series of studies made in a local butcher's shop in the East End of London, which were exhibited in his first one-man show in 1956. He was allowed to work in the shop on specific carcases when it closed on Wednesday afternoons.
Object of the Month - November 2009 Attributed to Alfred Stevens after C.R. Cockerell RA and William Grinsell Nicholl,The Sculptured Pediment of St George's Hall, Liverpool, lithograph, ca.1850. Cockerell's design for the monumental sculpture in the south pediment of St George's Hall, Liverpool originated in his Sketch of an idea for the Frontispiece of a Public Building in England exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1843.
Object of the Month - December 2009 Raymond Cowern RA (1913 - 1986), The Wilderness, Parnham, Dorset, pen and ink and watercolour, 1968 This watercolour was painted near the Tudor mansion of Parnham House in Dorset at a time when the estate had fallen into disuse. R. T. Cowern depicted a clearing in the overgrown landscape.
Object of the Month - January 2010 Sir Nicholas Grimshaw PRA (b.1939), Record drawing for Waterloo International Railway Terminal, Lambeth, London, print with blue and grey crayon added, 1997 Sir Nicholas Grimshaw presented this drawing of Waterloo International Terminal as his Diploma Work. It was made as a record of one of the architect's best-known projects.
Object of the Month - February 2010 Gary Hume RA, (b.1962) American Tan XXVIII1, gloss paint on aluminium, 2008 American Tan XXVIII1 is part of a large series of the same title which are thematically related, but also exist autonomously. The title, like this painting, has many layers of meaning and interpretation.
Object of the Month - March 2010 Gilliam Ayres RA, Salix, oil on canvas, 1990-91 With no defined narrative, Salix engulfs the viewer with possibility through the tools Ayres provides: colour, texture and space.
Object of the Month - April 2010 Edward Edwards ARA, The Church of St. Nicholas, Newcastle, pencil, watercolour and pen on wove paper, 1787-88 In 1787 the artist Edward Edwards visited Newcastle-upon-Tyne to paint scenery for the theatre. While he was there he also produced several topographical views, including this fine watercolour of St Nicholas's Church.
Object of the Month - May 2010 Algernon Newton RA, The Regent's Canal, Paddington, oil on canvas, 1930 This painting is the largest of Newton's elegant, tranquil, almost surreal depictions of London canals. Moving back to the capital after the First World War, the artist was inexorably drawn to the shabbier side of the city's poorer districts and slums. In the following decades, these rarely portrayed areas became the lynchpin of his work.
Object of the Month - June 2010 Lord Leighton PRA (1830-1896) Sketch model of Perseus, Pegasus and Andromeda for 'Perseus and Andromeda' In Greek legend, Queen Cassiopeia angered the sea god Poseidon by claiming that she or her daughter Andromeda was more beautiful than the Nereids. As punishment Poseidon sent a sea monster to attack her land. The only way that the monster could be averted was by chaining Andromeda to a rock in the sea as a sacrifice.
Object of the Month - July 2010 Sir Henry Rushbury RA, The Walls of Gerona Henry Rushbury's print The Walls of Gerona was made after a visit to the ancient fortified city in Catalonia, northeast Spain, in 1935. At the time the artist wrote home to his wife, 'After the grey of England this is a bright and subtle world to capture. The shadows are as sharp as a razor's edge yet they are full of reflected light and colour.'
Object of the Month - August 2010 Raeburn's Boy and Rabbit depicts Henry Raeburn Inglis in an informal and relaxed setting. The boy's proximity to the picture plane and Raeburn's broad handling of the landscape suggests a familiarity and ease which would have been more restrained in a commissioned portrait.