ART COLLEGES

In 2014 the artist Maggie Hambling declared that the principal skill that art school had taught had been how to roll a cigarette. She was proud of her ability to do so while her vehicle was stopped by a red traffic light.

Byam Shaw School of Art

Byam Shaw School of Art was founded in 1910.

The Byam Shaw has maintained a figurative tradition. In the 1970s and 1980s it was one of the few art schools that continued to have a life class.

In 2003 the Byam Shaw School of Art merged into Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design.

Location: 2 Elthorne Road, Islington, N19 4AG

Website: www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins

Camberwell College of Arts

In the post-1945 era a number of members of the Euston Road School were teaching at Camberwell. They included: B.A.R. Carter.

Camberwell Art College students included the jazz musicians Monty Sunshine (1928-2010), Wally Fawkes, and Humphrey Lyttleton (1921-2008). Under the name Trog, Fawkes was a much-published cartoonist.

Location: 45-65 Peckham Road, SE5 8UF

Website: www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/camberwell-college-of-arts

Central St Martins College of Art & Design

The Central St Martins College of Art & Design came into being in 1989 through the merger of the Central School of Arts & Crafts (1896) with St Martins School of Art (1854).

In 2008 it was reported that the King's Cross Granary building was going to become the home for Central St Martins College of Art & Design in 2010. At the time, the college was spread over six separate sites.

Location: 107-111 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0DT. The building on the Charing Cross Road was once the home of an independent institution called the College for the Distributive Trades. This serviced the staffing requirements of the retailers of the West End. (blue, orange)

Granary Square, The Eastern Goods Yard, King's Cross Goods Yard, N1C 4AB (purple, brown)

Website: www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/central-saint-martins

Central School of Arts & Crafts

In the 1950s the staff of the Central School of Arts & Crafts included: Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi, Victor Pasmore, and Mervyn Peake.

In the early 1950s the School a course that was based upon the Bauhaus method. Those who taught on the course included, Paolozzi, Alan Davie, Patrick Heron, William Turnbull (1922-2012).

St Martins School of Art

The future landscape sculptor Richard Long was ejected from a course at the West of England College of Art in Bristol. His idiosyncratic approach to his studies had been such that it was stated to his parents that he should not be allowed to contact any of his former fellow students. Long took to hanging around St Martins. Frank Martin, the head of sculpture, intuited that the young man might have potential and invited him to join the course without interviewing him or requiring him to make a formal application. Long's contemporaries included Gilbert & George.

In 1975 the Sex Pistols played their debut gig at St Martins.

Clothes designers have included: John Galliano, Katharine Hamnett, and Stella McCartney.

Former students who moved away from the visual arts included: Jarvis Cocker, P.J. Harvey, John Hurt, Mike Leigh, Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols, Anita Pallenberg, and three-quarters of The Clash.

Terence Conran attended St Martins School of Art.

Location: 107 Charing Cross Road, WC2H 0EB (blue, orange)

Chelsea College of Arts

The young John Berger (1926-2017) moved to London during the Second World War because he wanted to draw naked women. All day long. He attended the Central School of Art. Having served in the Army, he went on to study at the Chelsea School of Art. He became a noted art critic.

Location: 16 John Islip Street, SW1P 4JU (blue, yellow)

Website: www.arts.ac.uk/colleges/chelsea-college-of-arts

The City & Guilds of London Art School

Location: 124 Kennington Park Road, SE11 4DJ

Website: www.cityandguildsartschool.ac.uk

Doultons

In 1815 John Doulton bought a pottery that was sited in Lambeth, south London. The Doulton family developed the business so that it provided much of the sanitary ware for the Victorians efforts to improve hygiene and public health.

In the mid-1860s John Sparks, the principal of the Lambeth School of Art, persuaded Sir Henry Doulton to employ some of the School's students. The designs that the youths produced for the firm attracted considerable attention at exhibitions. As a result, there developed a highly successful marriage of industry and art.

Location: Lloyds Bank 222 Strand, WC2R 1BB. The branch's foyer is decorated with Doultonware ceramics. (red, yellow)

Website: www.royaldoulton.com

Croydon College

In 1968 Malcolm McLaren was a student at Croydon College of Art.

Website: https://croydon.ac.uk

Goldsmiths College

Julian Opie and Glen Baxter were an earlier Goldsmiths gang than the Y.B.A.s.

Goldsmiths did not differentiate between art and sculpture. Therefore, its many of its students produced mixed-media

In the 1980s the core of the Y.B.A.s passed through Goldsmiths . Michael Craig-Martin has expressed the view that it was a conjunction of talent that he was unable to recreate.

Location: 25 St James s, New Cross, SE14 6AD

Website: www.gold.ac.uk/art

The Heatherley School of Fine Art

The Heatherley School of Fine Art was an art school. Its teaching was centred upon the figure, its principal disciplines are portraiture, figurative painting, and sculpture.

The Government School of Design was established in 1837 to train designers for industries such as silk and lace making. However, some of the students attending it were intent on becoming fine artists. As a result, there grew to be considerable discontent at the practical nature of the School's syllabus. In 1845 a group of students petitioned the Trade Committee of the Privy Council. Subsequently, they were expelled. James Mathews Leigh (d.1860) established a school to provide them with somewhere to study. He had trained in France where there had been towards allowing students to develop their on techniques for painting. In 1860 Thomas Heatherley succeeded Leigh as the principal. He headed it for 27 years. The School had a peripatetic history. Its students included: Millais, Sickert, Rossetti, Henry Moore, and Posy Simmons. The models included Quentin Crisp.

In the 1950s the School was located in premises in Warwick Square, Pimlico. In 1956 Pitman & Sons bought the Artist s Magazine as part of a package of businesses. The others included the School. It was uninterested in it so the School went into a decline. In 1969 Pitmans decided to close the School. However, John Walton, a portrait painter who taught at the School, discovered that there was a clause in the Warwick Square's building's lease that restricted to its being only used as an art school. In 1970 Pitman reconstituted the School by placing its activities in a single room, while using the rest of the building as office space.

Walton persuaded the Inner London Education Authority to pay for the salaries of the teaching staff, whom Walton selected. The School's reputation began to improve and student numbers rose. In 1974 Pitmans announced that it was selling the lease back to the building s owner. The company sold the School to John Walton for 30 shillings.

Location: 75 Lots Road, SW10 0RN (red, turquoise)

Website: www.heatherleys.org

Middlesex University

Website: www.mdx.ac.uk/about-us/what-we-do/faculty-of-arts-and-creative-industries

Hornsey College of Art

The horror writer James Herbert was a student at Hornsey.

In 1973 Hornsey College of Art became part of Middlesex Polytechnic.

Location: 77 Crouch End Hill, N8 8DE

Ravensbourne University London

Location: 6 Penrose Way, Greenwich Peninsula, SE10 0EW

Website: www.ravensbourne.ac.uk

Richmond upon Thames College

Website: www.rutc.ac.uk

Twickenham Art School

Twickenham Art School was founded in 1937. It shared the site with a technical institute. In 1962 they became the Twickenham College of Technology. Fifteen years later the College merged with a number of local sixth form colleges to become Richmond upon Thames College (RuTC).

Location: Langhorn Drive, Twickenham, TW2 7SJ

The Royal Academy Schools

History painting sought to portray humanity in a way that transcended national boundaries. In 18^thC Europe it was received opinion that it had the highest status of the different painting forms. Epic works were costly and need to be displayed in large public spaces. In France there were vast royal palaces that had walls that needed to be filled. Therefore, training establishments were established to train artists to create public paintings. In Britain, with its more modest and more private palaces, the government was not going to pay for such schools.

The Royal Academy Schools is Britain's oldest art college.

Location: Burlington Gardens, W1J 0BD. (orange, yellow)

Website: www.royalacademy.org.uk/the-ra-schools

The Royal College of Art

The Royal College of Art is one of the world's foremost postgraduate universities of art and design. The idea for a national school of design came to the painter Benjamin Haydon in 1823; at the time the artist had time for speculation since he was then languishing in the King's Bench Prison for Debtors. In 1837 the government School of Design was set up following a formal recommendation that had been made by a Select Committee of the House of Commons two years earlier. The architect John Papworth was its first principal. The establishment was opened in Somerset House in rooms that had been vacated by the Royal Academy of Arts.

In 1841 the government founded schools of industrial design in the provinces. The best of the provincial students came to London for further training at the School.

In 1852 the Museum of Ornamental Art opened in Marlborough House. The following year the School of Design was re-designated as the National Art Training School. As such, it moved into the townhouse. In 1857 both of the institutions moved into the Brompton Boilers (later The Victoria & Albert Museum) in South Kensington. Six years later the School moved into a purpose-built building in Exhibition Road.¹ In 1896 it was allowed to assume the name of the Royal College of Art.

Peter Blake was a student at the College in mid-1950s. His contemporaries included the writer Len Deighton and the songwriter Ted Dicks (1928-2012), who was to write The Hole In The Ground (1962) and Right Said Fred (1962) for Bernard Cribbins.

In 1961 the College moved into an eight-storey building on Kensington Gore that had been designed by designed by H.T. Cadbury-Brown (1913-2009), Hugh Casson, and Robert Goodden. Six years later the institution received its royal charter. This conferred university status upon it.

Jocelyn Stevens was an independently wealthy newspaper executive. In 1984 he was chosen to be the Rector & Vice-Provost of the college. Subsequently, he remarked of his selection that he felt that he had opened somebody else's post by mistake. His eight years in the post were described as an orgy of blood-letting . The seventeen departments were reduced to four. Half of the academic staff left but student applications grew by over a quarter.

Location: Kensington Gore, SW7 2EU (blue, brown)

Website: www.rca.ac.uk www.rca.ac.uk/study/the-rca/experience/student-voices/rca-luminaries/sir-james-dyson

¹. Christopher Dresser was a lecturer at the School. His designs foreshadowed the Arts & Crafts movement.

At the north end of the Museum's Henry Cole Wing there is an archway. If one looks through this it is still possible to see Royal College of Art inscribed above a doorway.

Princess Louise

The Royal College of Art acquired its Royal in 1896 as a result of its having had Princess Louise, a daughter of Queen Victoria, as one of its students.

The Slade School of Fine Art

In 1949 William Coldstream was appointed the Slade Professor of Fine Art at The Slade School. The team that he assembled there included: Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Jeff Camp, (Bernard) B.A.R. Carter (1909-2006) (a Euston Road School painter who had been his colleague at Camberwell), Robyn Denny, Euan Uglow, and the art historians Ernst Gombrich and Rudolf Wittkower.

Location: Gower Street, WC1E 6BT (purple, red)

Website: www.ucl.ac.uk/slade

South Bank University

Website: www.lbsu.ac.uk/about-us/history

Borough Polytechnic Institute

Auto-Destructive Art

Gustav Metzger studied at Borough Polytechnic where his instructors included Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. David Bomberg reinforced the student's belief that art could be a social force. Metzger went on to pioneer the idea of auto-destructive art .

Location: Westminster Reference Library, 35 St Martin's Street, WC2H 7HP. Metzger was a frequent user of the library's Art & Design Collection. (purple, brown)

Website: www.westminster.gov.uk/leisure-libraries-and-community/libraries/westminster-reference-library

University of East London

Website: www.uel.ac.uk

Walthamstow College of Art

The future film director Ken Russell studied photography at Walthamstow Art College. He and the painter Peter Blake taught there. The students included Ian Dury and Peter Greenaway.

The College merged into North East London Polytechnic.

Location: Forest Road, Walthamstow, E17 4JB

The University of The Arts

The University of The Arts is a federal university that is composed of: the Camberwell College of Arts (founded 1898), the Central St Martins College of Art & Design (1854), the Chelsea College of Art & Design (1895), the London College of Communication (1894), the London College of Fashion (1906), and Wimbledon College of Art (1890).

The London Institute was a federation of art and design colleges that was created in 1986 by the Inner London Education Authority in response to the then government policy of cutting back higher education in art and design. The Institute's creation came to be regarded as a success. In 2004 it was granted a royal charter and became the University.

Location: 65 Davies Street, W1K 5DA

Website: www.arts.ac.uk www.camberwell.arts.ac.uk www.chelsea.arts.ac.uk www.fashion.arts.ac.uk www.lcc.arts.ac.uk www.wimbledon.arts.ac.uk

The London College of Fashion

Hammersmith School of Building and Arts & Crafts

Hammersmith School of Arts & Crafts was founded by Francis Hawke. Its initial home was in Brook Green. In 1904 the London County Council acquired the School. It moved to Lime Grove.

The site is now part of the London College of Fashion. It merged with the Chelsea College of Art & Design in 1975.

Location: 40 Lime Grove, W12 8EA

University of West London

Website: www.uwl.ac.uk

Ealing Art College

Students who attended Ealing College of Art who went on to become musicians included: Freddie Mercury, Andy Thunderclap Newman, Roger Ruskin Spear of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Pete Townshend, and the brothers Art and Ronnie Wood.

Gustav Metzger pioneered the idea of auto-destructive art . He gave a lecture at Ealing that was entitled Auto Destructive Art: The Struggle For The Machine Arts of The Future. It had a profound effect upon Townshend, the future The Who guitarist, who was to acquire a reputation for destroying his instruments.

Roy Ascott studied under Richard Hamilton at Newcastle. He was appointed to a post at Ealing. There, he set up a course that was intended to stimulate creativity. Those whom he taught on it included Michael English, who as a graphic designer became one of the principal creators of psychedelic imagery.

Location: St Mary's Road, Ealing, W5 5RF

The University of Westminster

Location: 115 New Cavendish Street, W1W 6UW

309 Regent Street, W1B 2HW (blue, turquoise)

Harrow School of Art

The humourist and musician Gerald Hoffnung (1925-1959) taught at Harrow School of Art.

David Backhouse 2024