The National Academy of Design
Free by charter, paid for out of twenty-five-cent exhibition tickets, and closed in 1875 when charging for lessons turned out to break the charter that made it free.
The National Academy of Design was founded by artists who wanted to run their own training. Samuel F. B. Morse gathered New York artists in November 1825 to form the New York Drawing Association, after the patron-run American Academy of the Fine Arts, governed by merchants and lawyers and physicians, declined to elect the artists they nominated to its board. In January 1826 the association voted itself into an academy and elected Morse its first president, and the school opened on 15 November 1826 in the rooms of the Philosophical Society. It ran the European ladder: an Antique School drawing the plaster casts, a Life School entered only on a Council-approved drawing of a full-length statue, professorial lectures from anatomy to mythology, and medals for standing. The teaching was free, and the Academy said plainly where the money came from: "our sole revenue is the Exhibition." That is also what killed it. When the money ran out in 1875, paid instruction was tried, and it worked, and it was then found to violate the Academy's charter. The schools closed, two hundred students were left without them, and they met in their own professor's studio and founded the Art Students League.
How the system worked
Less than the legend. The Academy's own printed rule through the 1870s asked for "an elementary practice in drawing from the round which will enable the applicant to show to the Council a fair shaded crayon drawing from a cast of a hand, foot, head or other part of a statue." A fragment, with no size named. By 1887 the wording had softened further, to a shaded drawing from a cast of some portion of the human figure, submitted to the School Committee. Cummings records that in the early years applicants brought a drawing from the round on Monday evenings, and that in December 1847 the Council closed the obvious loophole by ruling that the admission drawing had to be made inside the Academy's own schools. Women were not the exception the older accounts make them: the Academy elected women to membership in 1827, two years after founding, beginning with Julia Fulton, Ann Hall, Emily Maverick, and Maria Ann Maverick. Entrance examinations came only in the late 1890s, brought in with compulsory perspective and anatomy lectures to discourage students who were there casually.
Three schools stacked, under an artist-governed academy, which was the whole point of it. The Antique School was the foundation, the Life School the next rung, and a Painting School above that which students of the Life School alone could enter. Professors were appointed in 1826 to lecture on painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, perspective, mythology, antiquities, and ancient history, and the chairs were filled at once: Dr. Frederick Gore King was the first professor of anatomy, and the poet William Cullen Bryant was professor of mythology. From 1865 all of it worked inside P. B. Wight's polychrome Gothic building at the corner of 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue, which New York called the Venetian palace and the Doge's Palace. Its opening was put back from 16 to 29 April 1865 because Lincoln was shot on the 14th. The school rooms were in the basement, and a visitor in 1878 called them the Academy crypt and wrote of the depressing chilliness of a vault.
Antique, then life, then paint, and each step gated by a drawing. The printed rule: "Students of the Antique School only are eligible for admission to the Life School. This advancement is made on the exhibition to the Council of an approved drawing of a full length statue made in the Antique School and during the session when the application is made." Brownell, visiting in 1878, put it more bluntly: competition decided membership in the life class, and drawings of a full-length figure went before a council of Academicians who picked the best. Above that sat the Painting School, and in 1873 its studies were "from still life subjects and from the living model." A year later still life was gone from the wording, and by 1875 the Painting School paragraph had disappeared from the rules altogether. Life classes had come in 1837 for advanced male students only. A life class for women followed in 1857, and women drawing from the nude around 1871, after Wilmarth took the schools over.
The premium system, run as a controlled comparison. The 1887 rules: "The Elliott Medals, of silver and bronze, are awarded to the two students making the best drawings from the Antique. The Suydam Medals, also of silver and bronze, are given to the two students who attain the highest degree of proficiency in the Life school. In each class, all of the competitors for prizes make their drawings at the same time, from the same model." One model, one sitting, everybody. The medals were named for two dead Academicians, the portraitist Charles Loring Elliott and the Academy's benefactor James Augustus Suydam, and by 1886 the Elliott silver went for a full-length figure and the bronze for a head. There was no degree. Election to Associate and then Academician was the ladder that mattered, and it ran past the school into the institution.
Long, and moved around over the century. The 1825 association lit the lamp at six and put it out at nine. In 1848 the Life School shifted to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at two in the afternoon, "in place of 7, as before." By 1878 Wilmarth was in the rooms Tuesday and Thursday mornings and afternoons and Monday and Wednesday evenings, and the schools ran morning, afternoon, and evening around him. The 1894 catalogue gives the widest door of all: the antique rooms open to all students daily from 8 a.m. to 9.30 p.m., with the painting classes taking women from 9 to noon and men from 1 to 4, and a sketch class at half past four.
For fifty years, by the Visitors, and they were the school's weakest part. Academicians were apportioned in pairs and sent by printed programme to attend the school and instruct whoever was there. Cummings, who was in the room, wrote the verdict himself: "One or two did attend, for half an hour or so, the early meetings; but rarely, indeed, did the school see the countenances of the apportioned." Brownell in 1878 described what the students got when someone did turn up, one Academician saying get as far away from the gas as possible on Tuesday and another saying get as near the gas as you can on Thursday, and called the whole arrangement a slipshod and accidental system of teaching. The Academy fixed it by hiring somebody. In 1870 it appointed Lemuel Wilmarth its first professor of drawing and painting at $1,500 a year, and the school changed with him.
Free, and fatally so. The Academy told its members where the money came from: "We have no stockholders, no subscribers to create a fund for our use; our sole revenue is the Exhibition. By that we defray all our expenses." Exhibition admission was twenty-five cents, a season ticket a dollar, and the Council could price the schools against those receipts: each Antique School student cost the Academy $12.50 a year and each Life School student $40. A five-dollar entrance fee ran through the middle decades, defended on the grounds that a privilege purchased is often thought more valuable by its purchaser, but the 1870s catalogues advertise the schools open day and evening free, and Brownell wrote that students came to enjoy, without money and without price, the benefit of casts, models, and spasmodic instruction. Paid instruction was tried when the money ran short, succeeded, and was found to violate the charter. After the loan exhibitions of 1876 brought in some twenty thousand dollars the Academy reopened its free schools. A ten-dollar yearly entrance fee is back in the rules by 1887.
The curriculum, in training order
Crayon and chalk from the casts, beginning with the hand, foot, or head that got you in the door and working up to the full-length statues. The collection behind it was bought rather than inherited: when the American Academy of the Fine Arts closed in 1841 it sold its antique plaster casts to the National Academy, which put them straight into the drawing school.
An approved drawing of a full-length statue, made in the Antique School during the session in which you applied, exhibited to the Council.
The nude model, and the Academy paid for it. Brownell counted twenty-four men in the evening life class in 1878, ten men and eight women in the day life classes, and two portrait classes of twelve. He noted the Academy furnished nude models and had that one advantage over the Cooper Union.
The top of the ladder and the shortest-lived part of it. In 1873 only Life School students could enter, and the studies were from still life subjects and from the living model. In 1874 the still life was struck out. By 1875 the whole paragraph was gone. Brownell, writing in 1878, could say flatly that nothing but drawing was taught, though Wilmarth encouraged painting in a student who was not too obviously a beginner.
The book side of the ideal-form curriculum, staffed from the first year. Professors were appointed in 1826 for painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, perspective, mythology, antiquities, and ancient history. By the late 1890s the perspective and anatomy lectures were compulsory rather than offered.
The Elliott medals for the antique and the Suydam medals for the life school, silver and bronze in each. Every competitor in a class drew at the same time from the same model, which makes them the closest thing the school had to a controlled test. The Suydam medal was cut by Anthony C. Paquet, struck in 1870, and first awarded in 1871.
A surviving example: the 1875 first-prize Elliott, silver, two and a half inches, the obverse a portrait of Elliott signed by the U.S. Mint engraver William Barber, the reverse engraved "To Lloyd Branson Antique School First Prize 1875," in a Tiffany box.
Materials, models, and the room
- The student's own kit, the Academy's models. The split is in the Academy's own rules: students provide their own materials, and the Academy defrays the cost of the models. That is the whole economic argument of the place in one line, and it is why the schools closed when the exhibition receipts fell.
- Chalk and crayon on the casts. Charcoal from willow or vine in pencil-like holders, conté crayon, textured paper, and stumps of rolled paper or leather for the graduated tones. The entrance drawing itself is specified as a shaded crayon drawing, so crayon was the medium a student was judged on before they ever got in.
- Gaslight, and the crypt. A night school needs light, and gas was new enough in 1826 that the Academy advertised its first exhibition as brilliantly illuminated by it, with six single burners for the whole show. Fifty years later the schools were in the basement of the 23rd Street building, and Brownell wrote of the Academy crypt, of these catacombs, and of the depressing chilliness of a vault. The gas is also what the Visitors argued about, one telling students to sit as far from it as possible and the next to sit as near as they could.
- The Venetian palace. The Council put Peter B. Wight in as architect and bought the corner of 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue over Cummings's own objection. The building opened in 1865, held galleries, lecture halls, and school rooms together, and King's Handbook of New York City still had the schools occupying part of the Venetian palace in 1893. It was demolished later.
The people
Who taught
Samuel F. B. Morse · founding president, 1826-1845
Painter first and telegraph later. He called the November 1825 meeting that became the New York Drawing Association, and the artist-run academy was his argument that American artists should govern their own training rather than be trained by their patrons.
Thomas Seir Cummings · founder and the Academy's annalist
Miniature painter, and the reason the early rules survive. His Historic Annals of 1865 prints the founding regulations, the school's costs, and his own unsparing account of how badly the Visitors system worked.
Lemuel Everett Wilmarth · first professor of drawing and painting, 1870-1889
The school's hinge, and the first person paid to teach in it. Trained at the Munich academy under Kaulbach and then under Gérôme at the École des Beaux-Arts, he was hired in 1870 at $1,500 a year. When the schools closed in 1875 the students met in his studio and he led them out, served as the Art Students League's first president for two years, then came back and ran the Academy's schools until 1889.
Thomas Eakins · lecturer on anatomy, 1888 to the 1894-95 season
He gave an annual series of ten anatomy lectures at the Academy after Philadelphia forced him out. In the 1893-94 season he combined the previously separate men's and women's classes and drew objections from students and the press, which is the same collision that had ended his directorship at PAFA, run again on a smaller stage.
Dr. Frederick Gore King · first professor of anatomy, from 1826
The anatomy chair existed in the school's first year, which tells you what the founders thought a painter needed.
William Cullen Bryant · professor of mythology, from 1826
The poet held one of the founding professorships. The subjects the Academy thought worth a chair were the subjects history painting was made of.
Will Hicok Low · 1889-1892
Muralist and Barbizon-trained painter, teaching in the school's last confident decades.
The Visitors · the founding system, to 1870
Academicians apportioned in pairs and sent by printed programme to instruct whoever was in the rooms. It was correction by the membership rather than by a faculty, it cost nothing, and by the account of the Academy's own annalist it mostly did not happen.
Who trained here
Winslow Homer · 1859-60, 1860-61, and 1863-64
The exception that shows how the ladder worked. Homer registered for the night classes and was allowed straight into the life class without first proving himself at the antique, a privilege the Academy's own record calls unusual. He was drawing for the illustrated press at the time. Associate in 1864, Academician in 1865, and he still described himself as having had no master.
William Merritt Chase · from 1869
Arrived in New York, took over a painter's temporarily empty studio near the Academy building, and registered for the antique class. Family finances took him to St. Louis in 1870 and to Munich in 1872, and he came back to teach a generation at the rival League and then at his own school.
Frederic Edwin Church · 1846-47
Registered in the antique school after moving to New York, and was elected the Academy's youngest Associate in May 1849.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens · 1865-66
Apprenticed to a cameo cutter from the age of thirteen, at Cooper Union and then the Academy in the evenings, and in Paris by 1867. The night schedule is the only reason the training was possible at all.
Louis Comfort Tiffany · 1866-67
Enrolled in the Antique School for a season, decades before the glass.
Elihu Vedder · 1862-63
Antique classes while already exhibiting in the annuals, and an Academician by 1865.
James Carroll Beckwith · from 1871
Entered the antique class in the first full year under Wilmarth, whose encouragement he credited with carrying him through, and moved up to the life class the following year before sailing for Europe in 1873. His diaries in the Academy's archives are the fullest unpublished record of what the student life was actually like.
Frederick MacMonnies · 1881-1884
Evening antique and life classes under Wilmarth and Edgar Melville Ward, which is also the plainest evidence that Wilmarth came back after the League.
The primary record
- William C. Brownell, "The Art-Schools of New York," Scribner's Monthly 16 (October 1878), pp. 761-781, on why the schools closed: "The money at the Academy had given out, and paid instruction having been tried, and, despite its success, discovered to be a violation of the Academy's charter, the schools were closed in 1875, and almost two hundred students found themselves without instruction, free or otherwise, and without prospect of getting any. Mr. Wilmarth shared their distress, and June 2d, 1875, a meeting of the persons concerned was held in his studio.". The sibling of the Brownell article the PAFA record cites, published eleven months earlier. The best contemporary account of the National Academy's school, its Visitors, its rooms, and its collapse. Digitized at the Internet Archive in Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, October 1878.
- The National Academy of Design's annual exhibition catalogues, 1873-1894: the printed school rules. Admission by "a fair shaded crayon drawing from a cast of a hand, foot, head or other part of a statue"; promotion to the Life School "on the exhibition to the Council of an approved drawing of a full length statue made in the Antique School"; the Painting School and its still-life studies in 1873 and their disappearance by 1875; the Elliott and Suydam medals with all competitors drawing at the same time from the same model; the antique rooms open 8 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. in 1894; the schools advertised free in the 1870s and a ten-dollar entrance fee by 1887.
- Thomas Seir Cummings, Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design (1865): the 1825 association rules (own materials, light and fuel by equal contributions, five dollars to join, the lamp lit at six and out at nine), the Visitors apportioned in pairs and his verdict that "rarely, indeed, did the school see the countenances of the apportioned," the December 1847 ruling that admission drawings be made inside the Academy, the 1848 move of the Life School to two in the afternoon, and the Council's statement that "our sole revenue is the Exhibition," with the schools costing $12.50 a year per antique student and $40 per life student.
- The National Academy of Design's 200th-anniversary timeline: the November 1825 Drawing Association and the January 1826 votes, the first school session on 15 November 1826, the 1826 professorships, four women elected to membership in 1827, the 1841 purchase of the American Academy's casts, Wight's 1865 building and its postponed opening, Wilmarth's 1870 appointment at $1,500, the 1875 split, and the entrance examinations of the late 1890s.
- The Smithsonian Archives of American Art historical note on the National Academy of Design records: life classes introduced in 1837 for advanced male students only, a life class for women not instituted until 1857, and the Academy's repeated and unpopular attempts at fee structures across the second half of the nineteenth century.
- The surviving 1875 First Prize Elliott Medal: silver, two and a half inches, obverse a portrait of Charles Loring Elliott dated 1870 and signed by the U.S. Mint engraver William Barber, reverse engraved "To Lloyd Branson Antique School First Prize 1875," in a Tiffany and Co. box.. Known from a collector record rather than a museum catalogue. The medal and its inscription are legible in the photographs; the older claim that Tiffany struck it is not supported by the object.
Open questions
- The two-foot admission drawing, the probationer stage, the 9-to-2 and 7-to-9 hours, and the "highly finished" promotion drawing all appeared in the previous version of this record, sourced to Cummings (1865) and Clark (1954). The full text of Cummings does not contain them, and Clark was not reachable. They are removed rather than hedged. Anyone working from the older wording should treat it as unsupported.
- The 1875 closure is told two ways. Brownell in 1878, writing with Wilmarth's cooperation, says the schools were closed and gives the cause as the money running out and paid instruction being found to breach the charter. The Academy's own bicentenary timeline says students split off dissatisfied with the school's direction and the lack of funds for models. A third account, that drawing classes were cancelled for want of plaster casts, has no source and is not repeated here.
- The year the American Academy of the Fine Arts closed is given as 1841 by the National Academy's own timeline and as 1842 by other reference works. The sale of the casts is not in dispute.
- Model pay at the Academy is not documented. The rules say only that the Academy paid for the models. The rates often quoted for this school (a dollar fifty an hour, later cut to seventy-five cents) are the Art Students League's starting rates in 1875, not the Academy's.
- The subject of Enoch Lloyd Branson's prize-winning 1875 antique drawing is unknown. The Greek gladiator often attached to it comes from a collector forum and has no institutional source.
- The duty of the Visitors is often quoted as being to "give the students the benefit of their advice and instruction." That phrasing was not found in Cummings. The system itself, and how poorly it worked, is documented.
- That Wilmarth taught the new League's classes free until it could afford to pay him is widely repeated but confirmed by neither the League nor the Academy, and is not stated as fact here.
- When tuition became permanent is not pinned down. A five-dollar entrance fee ran through the middle decades, the schools were free again in the 1870s, and a ten-dollar yearly fee is in the rules by 1887.
- The exact date the school closed for good is not clearly published. The museum closed in June 2016, the Fifth Avenue property the Academy had held since 1942 was sold in 2018, and the school ended in the same period.
Common questions
What is the National Academy of Design?
The artist-founded American academy, established in New York in 1825 and constituted in January 1826 with Samuel Morse as its first president. It ran the European ladder: an Antique School, a Life School above it, and for a few years a Painting School above that, with professorial lectures and medals for standing. It is now an honorary body of elected National Academicians. It closed its museum in 2016 and its school in the years that followed, sold its Fifth Avenue buildings, and works from an endowment rather than a building.
Why did artists found their own academy?
Because the one that existed would not let them run it. The American Academy of the Fine Arts was governed by merchants, lawyers, and physicians, and when the artists it had nominated were not elected to its board, Morse called a meeting in November 1825 that became the New York Drawing Association. In January 1826 that association voted itself into an academy of its own. The founders included Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, and Thomas Seir Cummings, and the school opened its first session that November.
What did you have to draw to get in?
Less than the reputation suggests. The Academy's printed rule through the 1870s asked for a fair shaded crayon drawing from a cast of a hand, foot, head, or other part of a statue, shown to the Council. A fragment, and no size specified. By 1887 it was a shaded drawing from a cast of some portion of the human figure. The Council did close one loophole: from December 1847 the admission drawing had to be made inside the Academy's own schools rather than brought in from outside.
Was the National Academy's school free?
Yes, for most of its life, and that turned out to be a legal fact rather than a policy. The Academy had no endowment and no subscribers, and said so: its sole revenue was the annual exhibition, at twenty-five cents a ticket. Against those receipts each antique student cost it $12.50 a year and each life student $40. A five-dollar entrance fee ran through the middle decades, but the 1870s catalogues advertise the schools open day and evening free. When the money ran short the Academy tried charging, found it worked, and then found that charging violated its own charter.
Why did the Art Students League split from the National Academy?
Because the schools shut. Brownell, writing in 1878 with Wilmarth's cooperation, records that the money had given out, that paid instruction had been tried and had succeeded, and that it was then discovered to be a violation of the Academy's charter, so the schools were closed in 1875 and almost two hundred students were left with nothing. They met on 2 June 1875 in the studio of Lemuel Wilmarth, the Academy's own professor of drawing and painting, and formed the Art Students League, announcing that instruction would begin again that September. Wilmarth served as its first president for two years, then went back and ran the Academy's schools until 1889. The Academy reopened its own free schools after the 1876 loan exhibitions brought in some twenty thousand dollars.
When could women study from the nude at the National Academy?
Later than they became members, which is the odd part. The Academy elected women to membership in 1827, two years after founding, but the life classes when they came in 1837 were restricted to advanced male students. A life class for women was not instituted until 1857, and women drawing from the nude model followed around 1871, after Lemuel Wilmarth took over the schools. A photograph of the women's life class at work survives from 1894. By 1878 the rolls carried about a hundred and seventy-five names, rather more men than women.
Who trained or taught there?
Winslow Homer took the night classes across three seasons from 1859 and was let straight into the life class without the antique. William Merritt Chase registered for the antique class in 1869, Frederic Church in 1846, Elihu Vedder in 1862, Louis Comfort Tiffany in 1866, Augustus Saint-Gaudens in 1865, and Frederick MacMonnies from 1881. On the teaching side, Wilmarth ran the schools from 1870, and Thomas Eakins came up from Philadelphia to lecture on anatomy from 1888 through the 1894-95 season.
What were the Elliott and Suydam medals?
The Academy's premiums, named for two dead Academicians. The Elliott medals, silver and bronze, went to the best drawings from the antique, and the Suydams to the best in the life school. The competition was tighter than a prize usually is: every competitor in a class drew at the same time from the same model. An 1875 first-prize Elliott survives, silver and two and a half inches, its obverse signed by the U.S. Mint engraver William Barber and its reverse engraved to Lloyd Branson, in a Tiffany box.
Part of the Academies atlas, how painting was actually taught, system by system. The living version of this question: atelier vs online course, and the painters themselves in the Painter Atlas.