Royal Ulster Academy
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Royal Ulster Academy
The Royal Ulster Academy (RUA) has existed in one form or another since 1879. It started life then, as The Belfast Ramblers' Sketching Club drawn from the staff of Marcus Ward & Co who held their first show in Ward's Library on Botanic Avenue in 1881. In 1890, it became The Belfast Art Society; later, in 1930, its name was changed to "The Ulster Academy of Arts" and Sir John Lavery was elected its first President; finally, in 1950, King George VI conferred the title The Royal Ulster Academy of Arts upon the institution. The organisation invited entries for their 1941 annual show from artists serving in the armed forces, from which twenty entrants were chosen and shown in a special section at the exhibition. After many years of falling standards at the Annual exhibition Anne Crookshank, Curator of Art at the Ulster Museum, pruned the show down to just thirty-seven works for the 1958 show. By 1970 the organisation was floundering, and no student or avant-garde artist would have been ...
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Marcus Ward & Co
Marcus Ward and Co. was an Irish publishing company known for its illustrated books for children and adults, as well as its decorative greeting cards. It had its beginnings in 1802, with a partnership between John Ward, James Blow and Robert Greenfield. By the 1820s they owned paper mills in Belfast, Comber and Coleraine. which operated under the company name of John Ward and Sons. In the early 1830s Marcus Ward (son of John Ward) took over the running of the Belfast paper mill. Then in 1833 Marcus formed a new company, Marcus Ward & Sons, based in Belfast, having a new direction, in stationery and general publishing. Marcus Ward and Sons soon became very successful in the area of colour lithography, winning a medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851. By the time Marcus died in 1847 his three sons, Francis, William and John, had successfully taken over the running of the business. (In later life John was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (FSA), committee member of the Egypt Exp ...
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William Conor
William Conor OBE RHA PPRUA ROI (1881–1968) was a Belfast-born artist. Celebrated for his warm and sympathetic portrayals of working-class life in Ulster, William Conor studied at the Government School of Design in Belfast in the 1890s. Born in 5 Fortingale Street, which ran from Agnes Street, off the Shankill Road to the Old Lodge Road in north Belfast, the son of a wrought-iron worker, his artistic talents were recognized at the early age of ten when a teacher of music, Louis Mantell, noticed the merit of his chalk drawings and arranged for him to attend the College of Art. On finishing his studies at the College of Art he became apprenticed to David Allen and Sons a firm of lithographers where he worked in the poster design department. Although he had become skilled in a trade, he did not want to spend his life working in a lithographic firm. Conor left David Allen around 1910/1911 to pursue a career as an artist. According to the account of a family friend he then ...
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Academies Of Arts
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, founded approximately 385 BC at Akademia, a sanctuary of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and skill, north of Athens, Greece. Etymology The word comes from the ''Academy'' in ancient Greece, which derives from the Athenian hero, ''Akademos''. Outside the city walls of Athens, the gymnasium was made famous by Plato as a center of learning. The sacred space, dedicated to the goddess of wisdom, Athena, had formerly been an olive grove, hence the expression "the groves of Academe". In these gardens, the philosopher Plato conversed with followers. Plato developed his sessions into a method of teaching philosophy and in 387 BC, established what is known today as the Old Academy. By extension, ''academia'' has come to mean the accumulation, dev ...
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Art Societies
Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art, and its interpretation has varied greatly throughout history and across cultures. In the Western tradition, the three classical branches of visual art are painting, sculpture, and architecture. Theatre, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature, music, film and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of the arts. Until the 17th century, ''art'' referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts or sciences. In modern usage after the 17th century, where aesthetic considerations are paramount, the fine arts are separated and distinguished from acquired skills in general, such as the decorative or applied arts. The nature of art and related concepts, ...
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Belfast
Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom and the second-largest in Ireland. It had a population of 345,418 . By the early 19th century, Belfast was a major port. It played an important role in the Industrial Revolution in Ireland, briefly becoming the biggest linen-producer in the world, earning it the nickname "Linenopolis". By the time it was granted city status in 1888, it was a major centre of Irish linen production, tobacco-processing and rope-making. Shipbuilding was also a key industry; the Harland and Wolff shipyard, which built the , was the world's largest shipyard. Industrialisation, and the resulting inward migration, made Belfast one of Ireland's biggest cities. Following the partition of Ireland in 1921, Belfast became the seat of government for Northern Ireland ...
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Jean Duncan (artist)
Jean Duncan (1933–2 October 2018) was a British artist known as a painter, printmaker and video artist. Although born in Scotland, Duncan's career was largely based in Northern Ireland. Biography Duncan was born in Edinburgh and, from 1951 to 1955, studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and then spent a year at the Moray House School of Education. Duncan settled in Belfast and, in 1980, took a post-graduate diploma in printmaking at the Ulster Polytechnic and then co-founded the Seacourt Print Workshop based in Bangor, County Down. Duncan was elected a member of the Royal Ulster Academy in 1994 and was a member of the Artists' Association of Ireland. She had a number of solo exhibitions and gallery shows throughout her career. In 1986 her exhibition ''Sense and Symbols'' was held at the Octagon Gallery in Belfast, a solo show was held at One Oxford Street, Belfast in 1993 and her series of etchings inspired by John Tavener's ''The Protecting Veil'' was exhibited at the Royal N ...
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Victor Sloan
Victor Sloan Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, MBE (born 1945) is a Northern Irish photographer and artist. Life and work Sloan was born in 1945 in Dungannon, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland. He studied at the Royal School Dungannon, Royal School, Dungannon, Co. Tyrone and University of Ulster#Belfast, Belfast and Leeds College of Art, Leeds Colleges of Art, the latter in England. He lives and works in Portadown, County Armagh in Northern Ireland. Employing primarily the medium of photography, he manipulates his negatives and reworks his prints with paints, inks, toners and dyes. In addition to photography, he also uses video, and printmaking techniques. Sloan's works are a response to political, social and religious concerns. He is perhaps best known for his works investigating the Orange Institution, Orange Order in series such as: ''Drumming''; ''The Walk, the Platform and the Field'' and ''The Birches''. Sloan was awarded an Order of the British Em ...
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Basil Blackshaw
Basil Joseph Blackshaw ''HRUA, HRHA'' (July 1932 – 2 May 2016) was a Northern Irish artist specialising in animal paintings, portraits and landscapes and an Academician of the Royal Ulster Academy. Early life and education Born in Glengormley, County Antrim, Northern Ireland and brought up in Boardmills in Lisburn, County Down, he was the son of a professional horse trainer, Englishman Samson Blackshaw and Edith Clayton from Tyrone. Blackshaw attended Methodist College Belfast and studied at Belfast College of Art (1948–1951) under Romeo Toogood. In 1950 Blackshaw joined two of his fellow students, Michael Stewart and Esther Crolley, as winners of the annual competition for the most outstanding students of the year, in the forty-eighth annual exhibition of the Ulster Arts Club. In 1951 Blackshaw was awarded a scholarship to study in Paris by the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts. For a number of years after his graduation Blackshaw taught part-time at the B ...
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Rita Duffy
Rita Duffy (born 1959) is a Northern Ireland artist, described in 2005 as the province's "foremost artist". She describes herself as a Republican, pacifist and feminist. Her installations and projects often highlight socio-political issues and some of her work is in the permanent collections of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Imperial War Museum in London. Background Rita Duffy was born in Belfast in 1959 to a Catholic family and grew up during the Troubles of the 1970s, in the Protestant neighbourhood of Stranmillis, Belfast. When at college she preferred socially engaged, figurative painting and, during her holidays, she lived in New York City drawing street portraits. Work Duffy describes herself as a Republican, a nationalist, a pacifist and a feminist. She uses irony, wit and humour to interrogate Irish history and politics. Her work is also influenced by surrealism and magic realism. In 2005, Duffy came to wider attention for her proposal to tow an iceberg from ...
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Mercy Hunter
Mercy Hunter ''HRUA PPRUA ARCA MBE'' (22 January 1910 – 20 July 1989) was a Northern Irish artist, calligrapher and teacher. Hunter was a founding member of the Ulster Society of Women Artists, where she was later to become president and she was also a past president of the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts. Early life Mercy Hunter was born in Belfast on 22 January 1910, one of five children of William Hunter, a Presbyterian minister, and his Russian-born wife Alice Beyer. Hunter was christened Martha Saie Kathleen, but was always known as Mercy. Her parents served as missionaries in China, with Hunter travelling to Manchuria at the age of four. She spent her childhood there, leaving to attend secondary school in Toronto, Canada, and at Belfast Royal Academy. She went on to attend Belfast College of Art from 1927 to 1929, and won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London from 1930 to 1933 where she studied under the calligrapher Edward Johnston. Whilst in London she be ...
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Sir John Lavery
Sir John Lavery (20 March 1856 – 10 January 1941) was a Northern Irish painter best known for his portraits and wartime depictions. Life and career John Lavery was born in inner North Belfast, baptised at St Patrick's Church, Belfast and, while still a child, moved to Scotland where he attended Haldane Academy in Glasgow in the 1870s. In 1878 he set up his own studio which was razed in a fire in the following year. With a £300 insurance pay-out he spent a year studying at Heatherley's School in London. Lavery continued his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris in the early 1880s. He returned to Glasgow and was associated with the Glasgow School. William Burrell, a wealthy shipowner, was a faithful patron of Scottish artists including Joseph Crawhall II, with whom Lavery studied. In 1888 he was commissioned to paint the state visit of Queen Victoria to the Glasgow International Exhibition. This launched his career as a society painter and he moved to London soon af ...
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King George VI
George VI (Albert Frederick Arthur George; 14 December 1895 – 6 February 1952) was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death in 1952. He was also the last Emperor of India from 1936 until the British Raj was dissolved in August 1947, and the first Head of the Commonwealth following the London Declaration of 1949. The future George VI was born in the reign of his great-grandmother Queen Victoria; he was named Albert at birth after his great-grandfather Albert, Prince Consort, and was known as "Bertie" to his family and close friends. His father ascended the throne as George V in 1910. As the second son of the king, Albert was not expected to inherit the throne. He spent his early life in the shadow of his elder brother, Prince Edward, the heir apparent. Albert attended naval college as a teenager and served in the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force during the First World War. In 1920, he was made Duke of Yo ...
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