![]() ![]() ![]() This housekeeper’s bill (shown below) from January 26, 1788, gives us a snapshot of daily life at the Academy. When I was looking through the RA Archive, I unexpectedly discovered documents that not only show women regularly joining men in this profession, but also that they were being paid double compared to their male counterparts. They were often sex workers or working class women whose bodies would not necessarily have been in their prime, and in many cases it would have been the brothel owner who sent them, regardless of their own wishes. Women on the other hand often presented more of a challenge. Male models at the time were chosen for their physique, and were often the porters of the Academy, soldiers or boxers. Interestingly, in 1769 the person responsible for acquiring such women was none other than George Michael Moser, then Keeper at the Academy and founding member Mary Moser’s father. I was interested to find out what type of woman would have been willing to become a nude life model, in the context of the mid-18th century, when women were generally regarded as the passive property of their husband or their fathers. In the same year, rules were established to ensure that men under the age of 20 who were unmarried were prohibited from drawing from the female nude. Here it was agreed that in addition to four male models, one female model should be employed three times a week for each of the summer and winter terms. In general, female nude models were not introduced into academies in Europe until the 19th century, but England was the exception, with the Royal Academy itself recording the use of female models as early as 1769. ![]() The Academy championed the importance of teaching its students life drawing by integrating the facilities for drawing from life within its first headquarters in Pall Mall, and later in Old Somerset House. With women now represented in the Membership and awarded the right to study from a life model during their education, the third arena where we discover an intriguing facet to the history of women at the RA is back in the Life Room. An earlier version of this article was published in 2015. ![]()
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