Council minutes, vol. 25

1 vol., 548pp.

Volume of minutes of the Council, including the following selected entries: note of the motor accident involving Sir Aston Webb and three other Academicians, 6 May 1924; letter from the director of the National Gallery in reply to the Royal Academy’s decision to loan the cartoon of ‘The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist’, by Leonardo da Vinci, 6 May 1924; consideration of a proposal that the Royal Academy purchase Flatford Mill, East Bergholt, Suffolk, for use as a school of landscape painting in honour of John Constable, 4 November 1924, a note of the report of the Committee into the proposal, 11 December 1924 and further, 27 January 1925; entry relating to the theft, and subsequent recovery, of four landscape studies by John Constable, 16 March 1926; rejection of a proposal to place an advertisement by Bovril Ltd, on the back cover of Royal Academy Illustrated, 16 March 1926; discussion and transcript of legal opinion concerning the portrait of ‘HM King George V’ by the Keeper, Charles Sims, which had met with the King’s disapproval, 1 April 1926, the Royal Academy’s insistence that they could dispose of the portrait as they thought fit, in the face of Sims’s opposition, 22 April 1926, further, 4 May, 18 May and 29 June 1926, and a note of the burning of the portrait, 21 March 1927; the Council’s disapproval of the absence of the Keeper, Charles Sims, in the United States and their dissatisfaction with the general performance of his duties, 13 October 1926, and Sims’s resignation and the appointment of a director for the Schools, 8 - 16 November 1926, 14 December 1926 and 11 January 1927; the decision to recommend for approval by the General Assembly a request from engraver members to have identical status with other sections of the membership, 13 March 1928; approval of a memorandum [4pp.] by the Secretary, Sir Walter Lamb, advocating the discontinuation of the Schools Committee as a result of administrative problems arising from the sharing of control with the Council, 13 November 1928; and a resolution, in response to a request from the Hanging Committee, to ask Mr G. Kelly, RA elect, to withdraw an oil painting entitled 'The Sphinx' from the exhibition as unsuitable, 10 April 1930.