A Life Class at the Royal Academy, Somerset House

Rowlandson's image shows a life class taking place at the RA, when it was based at New Somerset House on the Strand (from 1780 to 1836). Royal Academy students and Royal Academicians are seated on semi-circular benches facing the model on a platform.

The life class ran for two hours every night during term-time but during the run of the Academy's annual summer exhibition the room was used as a gallery to display sculpture and drawings. The class was taught by a succession of nine 'Visitors' per year. These were Royal Academicians elected by their peers to take a turn of teaching the class for a month each. The Life Room (or the School of Living Models, as it was often referred to at the time) was situated on the ground floor of what is now the Courtauld Institute Gallery. It was equipped with a large central hanging lamp and reflectors (seen in Rowlandson's image), which were used to direct light towards the platform where the model posed. The walls were lined with compartments holding plaster casts of busts, figures and ornamental reliefs from classical and Renaissance eras.

This image demonstrates Rowlandson's characteristic visual satire as he mocks the keen interest some of the Academicians and students are taking in the female model. Some of the artists in the foreground are drawn almost as grotesques and seem to be intently staring at the model rather than concentrating on their work, others seated in the rows behind appear to be discussing the model and one man on the far left hand side is holding up an eye glass to inspect her. This characterisation of the Academicians and RA students as lechers is typical of Rowlandson's caricatures. As curator Patricia Phagan has pointed out, “there was something compulsive in his repeated depiction of the seductive or voyeuristic relationships of grotesque old men and busty young women, or of the traitorous triangle of young wife, young lover, and old husband”.

By providing both male and female life models, the Royal Academy departed from European academic tradition – but female models were far less respected by the (all-male) drawers. When Rowlandson was a student at the RA from 1772 to 1778, he is said to have nearly been expelled after firing a pea-shooter at the female model during the life class.

It is also interesting to note that Rowlandson's depiction of the life class includes an artist apparently painting at an easel. It is often stated that the Royal Academy only taught drawing in life classes but this is not strictly true – painting seems to have been allowed, particularly for Academicians or more advanced students.