Richard Burchett - The South Kensington System

The South Kensington System

The controversy at the school in 1845 was about the Headmaster and his teaching methods, but reflected wider issues about the aims of the school in terms of the balance between fine art and applied and commercial art and design; these questions were to remain a perennial bone of contention for at least another century, and are a recurring theme in Christopher Frayling's 1987 history of the College. The new teaching methods implemented by Burchett were themselves to become a matter of controversy.

The school had been founded in 1837, as the Government School of Design, occupying part of Somerset House on the Strand, until the space was needed for the Register of Births, Deaths and Marriages. It became the National Art Training School in 1853, moving to the equally palatial setting of Marlborough House, thanks to Prince Albert, leaving a section just for training art teachers on the Strand, and establishing a separate "Female School" in Gower St, from 1861 Queen Square, Bloomsbury. In 1861 the main school moved again to buildings adjoining (and now absorbed by) the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, and long after Burchett's death it became in 1896 The Royal College of Art. It is often referred to as the "Government Art School", and later the "South Kensington Schools", in the 19th century (the school was at various points divided into different sections, such as the "Female School", also under Burchett, and there were also science schools run by the Science and Art Department, hence the plural).

The main art school in London was the Royal Academy Schools, which made space for the new school by its decision to vacate Somerset House for the new National Gallery building, where it stayed until 1867. They had been established decades before the Government School, to provide a full training in Academic art; by the 1830s the majority of successful English artists had trained there. The Government School was funded by the Board of Trade, and intended, at least by them, for different purposes, though precisely what these were remained a political battleground for decades. The school was not founded to train academic painters; this at least was clear, although in fact many ex-students became just that. The Government had recognised that British industrial design was falling behind that of the Continent, and believed that the training of designers was worth public subsidy. Later, a national network of schools to train students in applied art and design was established, and the central London school was both to be the flagship of the network, and to train teachers for the rest of the schools.

William Dyce was the first Director, and Burchett studied under him, and then worked with him as a colleague, until Dyce left in 1848. The Isle of Wight paintings from 1855 suggest the two remained friends.

After the internal disputes of the 1840s, the school acquired a firm sense of control and direction when in 1853 the Government placed it under the control of Henry Cole, for whom the Science and Art Department was set up, with a large tract of land, and much of the large profit from the 1852 Great Exhibition to spend. Cole was an extremely dynamic figure, with some training as a painter, and experience as an entrepreneurial designer of china. He 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.

Redgrave, drawing on Dyce's ideas, and propelled by Cole, set out the "South Kensington system", a highly specific syllabus for the teaching of art, which was to be dominant in the UK, and other English-speaking countries, at least until the end of the century, and not to entirely vanish until the 1930s. Burchett was the first to implement the course in London, and worked with Redgrave in drawing it up - Redgrave had much less teaching experience. 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.

The full course was divided into twenty-three stages, most with several sections. Different types of students were to take different combinations of stages: "machinists, engineers and foremen of works" should take stages 1–5, and then skip to the final 23rd stage, "Technical Studies", while designers and "ornamentalists" took most stages.

There were several types of students, pursuing different courses: the "general students", who paid no fees and were given a small living allowance, training to be teachers of art (though many ended up elsewhere), the "National Scholars" intended for industrial designers, and fee-paying students, pursuing a course more oriented to the fine arts. Latterly these were in fact the majority. Women pupils were taught at least partly separately, and their life classes consisted of drawing a man wearing a suit of armour. The Royal Academy Schools did not accept women students until 1861, although there were other alternatives for women. The female school, under Royal patronage, became a rather fashionable place for young ladies, able to support its expansion by society fundraising.