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| Pier Francesco Alberti Art Academy in Rome ca. 1600-1630 etching British Museum |
"The first art academies appeared in Italy at the time of the Renaissance. They were groupings of artists whose aim was to improve their social and professional standing, as well as to provide teaching. To this end they sought where possible to have a royal or princely patron. Previously, painters and sculptors had been organised in guilds, and were considered mere artisans or craftsmen."
"Academies became widespread by the seventeenth century, when they also began to organise group exhibitions of their members' work. This was a crucial innovation, since for the first time it provided a market place, and began to some extent to free artists from the restrictions of direct royal, church, or private patronage. The most powerful of the academies was the French Académie Royale de Peinture et Sculpture, established in 1648 and housed in the Palais du Louvre in Paris. The Académie began to hold exhibitions in 1663 and opened these to the public from 1673. After the French Revolution the name was changed to Académie des Beaux-Arts. The London Royal Academy was founded in 1768 with Joshua Reynolds as its first president."
"By the mid nineteenth century the academies had become highly conservative and by their monopoly on major exhibitions resisted the rising tide of innovation. The result was that alternative exhibiting societies were established and private commercial galleries began to appear. The academies were bypassed, and the term "academic art" gained the negative connotation of conservative or old-fashioned."
– text from the Tate Gallery in London
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| Martin Dichti Drawing Academy ca. 1658 mezzotint British Museum |
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| Simon Fokke after Aart Schouman The Art Academy at the Hague 1751 etching British Museum |
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| David Allan Interior of Glasgow Academy ca. 1780-95 etching British Museum |
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| Anonymous English artist View of the Antique School at the Royal Academy, London (Art Master seen from behind, students drawing from casts) ca. 1790 drawing, watercolor British Museum |
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| Johann Jacobé after Martin Ferdinand Quadal The Life Room of the Vienna Academy 1790 mezzotint British Museum |
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| Thomas Rowlandson A Dutch Academy (satirical print) 1792 hand-colored etching British Museum |
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| Jacques Kuyper after Pieter Barbiers the Younger Drawing Room of the Felix Meritis Society in Amsterdam 1801 etching, engraving British Museum |
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| William Behnes Pupils at Art Academy painting large canvases ca. 1810-30 etching British Museum |
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| George Cruikshank George Cruikshank in the Royal Academy, studying (students drawing from cast of an antique Venus) before 1865 woodcut British Museum |
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| Anonymous printmaker after Johan Joseph Zoffany Life School at the Royal Academy, London 1872 wood-engraving from The Graphic British Museum |
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| Samuel Halpert Life Drawing Class at L'Atelier Bonnat, Paris 1900 etching British Museum |
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| Poul Christiansen Art School in Copenhagen 1905 etching British Museum |
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| Terry Frost Camberwell students drawing from casts, London ca. 1947-49 drawing British Museum |