21 Facts About Richard Burchett

1.

Richard Burchett was a British artist and educator on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who was for over twenty years the Headmaster of what later became the Royal College of Art.

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2.

Richard Burchett was later described as "a prominent figure in the art-schools, a well-instructed painter, and a teacher exceptionally equipped with all the learning of his craft" by his ex-pupil, the poet Austin Dobson.

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3.

Richard Burchett published collections of his lectures as text-books for the South Kensington system of art education, which he helped to devise.

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4.

Richard Burchett attended the "London Mechanics Institute" in Chancery Lane, before in about 1841 entering the "Government School of Design", founded three years before in 1837, which he was later to head, and which eventually became the Royal College of Art.

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5.

Richard Burchett spent most of his time throughout his adult life on his work at the school, and that his most highly regarded work today is an atypical landscape subject is an indication of how much his personal painting was neglected for teaching, and public commissions through the school.

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6.

Richard Burchett had only been in the School for 133 days in 1872, arriving punctually on only seven of these.

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7.

Richard Burchett began to get into deep water, and into the hands of 20 per cent money-lenders.

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8.

Richard Burchett's venture was ill-timed, hitting a period of agricultural depression.

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9.

Richard Burchett's will was probated at less than £200, and Frayling records that a letter from his widow asking for a pension was found unanswered in the school files thirteen years later.

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10.

Richard Burchett exhibited a work at the British Institution in 1855.

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11.

Dyce, like Richard Burchett, was an artist who saw himself as a history painter but is most often remembered for a single Pre-Raphaelitish landscape, his Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858.

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12.

Richard Burchett painted other works for the new Palace, including a large Spanish Armada scene The English Fleet Pursuing the Spanish Fleet Against Fowey, copying from an 18th-century print a one of a set of tapestries made for Lord Howard of Effingham, the victorious admiral.

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13.

William Dyce was the first Director, and Richard Burchett studied under him, and then worked with him as a colleague, until Dyce left in 1848.

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14.

Richard Burchett made the young painter Richard Redgrave, master of botany at the school since 1847, responsible for the superintendence of the national system, and appointed Burchett as Headmaster of the London School.

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15.

Richard Burchett was the first to implement the course in London, and worked with Redgrave in drawing it up - Redgrave had much less teaching experience.

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16.

Richard Burchett's published lectures reflected the system, and were widely used as text-books for it; how far he was involved in devising it cannot be said.

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17.

Richard Burchett appears buying a number of lots for the school and a few for himself in the huge sale in 1855 of the distinguished collection of Ralph Bernal.

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18.

Richard Burchett looked after a number of paintings by his colleague, the Pre-Raphaelite Walter Howell Deverell for a decade after Deverell's early death, before handing them on to Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

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19.

Richard Burchett must have known Deverell as a boy, as his father had been Secretary to the school, and the family lived on the premises until 1852.

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20.

Apart from his own students, Richard Burchett encouraged other young artists, sending the Royal Academy schools a letter of recommendation for the young Albert Moore.

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21.

Portraits of the heavily-bearded Richard Burchett include a marble bust by his pupil Henrietta Montalba in an elaborate pink alabaster frame designed by George Clausen that has followed the Royal College to its new Darwin Building on Kensington Gore, where it is installed in a courtyard.

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