Joseph Severn and the establishment of the British Academy in Rome

Abstract

The British were much the most numerous and visible of the visitors who came to Rome when the Continent re-opened for travellers after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. When Keats and Severn arrived in November 1820 there were around 2000 of them. They, but not Keats and Severn, strutted around, lording it over the natives, doing the rounds in their carriages of the galleries, churches and antique ruins, and bursting into spirited renditions of 'God Save the King' when they made it to the top of St. Peter's. For all their evident national pride, however, it was a humiliation to discover that in the art capital of the world, it was the French and Italian academies which dominated with the British artists having no organised means of getting together to refine their skills and promote their presence in Rome. As Charlotte Eaton complained in her study of the Eternal City: 'The illiberality, and the pitiful penurious spirit, our government has always manifested in everything relative to the arts, form a remarkable contrast to its lavish expenditure in other respects.