Ken Howard RA, The Royal Academy Selection Committee 1985, 1985.
Pen and ink on wove paper. © . © Photo: Royal Academy of Arts, London. Photographer: Prudence Cuming Associates Limited.
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The Royal Academy Selection Committee 1985, 1985
Ken Howard RA (1932 - 2022)
RA Collection: Art
Ken Howard's sketch of the 1985 Selection Committee mirrors C.W. Cope's 'The Council of the Royal Academy Selecting Pictures for the Exhibition', 1875. It deftly illustrates how the process of selecting works for the RA's Summer Exhibition remains remarkably unchanged. Howard wrote of this perennially challenging task that he and fellow selectors, including Roger de Grey PRA and Jean Cooke RA, were 'assailed by cats, dogs and owls' but 'laboured hard and long to glean the best from more than 15,000 works…painfully conscious of the love and effort that have gone into all of them'.
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