I have spent a lot of time in the last week in the Royal Academy Schools, enjoying the final exhibition of the students to mark the end of three years postgraduate study. This year, for the first time, they opened up the old Architecture Room, which hasn’t been used for the study of architecture since the mid-1950s, but which still retains behind its temporary walls Sir Thomas Lawrence’s collection of architectural casts, which he must have bequeathed following his death in 1830:-
I have been struck, certainly not for the first time, by the quality and historic interest of the cast collection, some of which was brought to the Academy by George Michael Moser when they first set up an Academy in Pall Mall in March 1767. There is a nice mix of cadavers, skeletons and classical heads:-
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
Thank you for drawing attention to the Lawrence casts etc which I failed to notice when I went last week to the Opening of the Schools Exhibition. What an amazing Collector he was !, as the Ashmolean shows clearly. ( I hope that the new space provided by 6, Burlington Gardens will allow the casts, and Lawrence’s contribution to the Academy, to be properly appreciated ?)
Lawrence was a superb President, a worthy successor of Reynolds and by some way the best since Reynolds – as the present PRA, Christopher Le Brun is the best in the last hundred years : a worthy successor to Reynolds and Lawrence.
The exhibition shows clearly that the Schools, led by Eliza Bonham Carter, and Eileen Cooper, are in fine form.