Council minutes, vol. 21

1 vol., 557pp.

Volume of minutes of the Council, including the following selected entries: notification of the opinion of Mr Haldane QC upholding the right of the Charity Commission to receive accounts of the Chantrey Fund, 11 January 1900; the poor state of the refreshment room, 30 January 1900; the resolution that the president should address a formal letter to HM First Commissioner of Works requesting first refusal on the University of London site in Burlington Gardens, 2 April 1900, note of reply, 15 May 1900 and the report of the President, Sir Edward Poynter, of an interview with Lord Esher, Secretary of the Office of Works, in which it was stated that there was no prospect whatever of the Royal Academy obtaining any part of the site, 19 June 1900; note of a request from the Board of Trade to consider whether the United States government’s preferential 15% rate of import duty on works of art from France, Germany, Italy and Portugal could be considered prejudicial to the export of British works of art (which carried a 20% duty) and should constitute grounds for a protest by the British Government, 20 November 1900 and decision of the Council that the policy did constitute a grievance, 11 December 1900; resolution for submission to the General Assembly that following the death of Queen Victoria, no annual dinner be held that year, 12 March 1901; support for an architectural plan by Sir Hamo Thornycroft to modify the London County Council’s proposed alterations to the Strand, London, 9 July 1903; a note of the Royal Academy’s attitude to the decline of engraving in England, in response to a letter from the Art Union of London, 5 January 1905; decision to canvass members’ opinions about a letter from the National Art Collections Fund seeking the Royal Academy’s support for its plan to purchase the painting ‘Venus and Cupid’ [‘The Toilet of Venus’ or ‘The Rokeby Venus’] by Diego Velázquez, 21 November 1905; the receipt of a letter from Mrs Julia Frankaw containing allegations about commissions which had been given to Alfred Gilbert, 12 December 1905 and 10 January 1906; and a note of a letter from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, asking to know if his omission from the list of guests at the annual dinner for over ten years was accidental, 17 April 1906.