Royal Academy Exhibition of 1788

The Royal Academy Exhibition of 1788 was the twentieth annual Summer Exhibition of the British Royal Academy of Arts. It was held at Somerset House in London between 28 April and 7 June 1788.^[1] The President of the Royal Academy Joshua Reynolds was again the dominant force at the exhibition, submitting seventeen paintings. This included The Infant Hercules a commission for the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, which drew a mixed reception from art critics.^[2] His portraits included Lady Elizabeth Foster and Portrait of Lord Heathfield. depicting the victorious commander during the Great Siege of Gibraltar.^[3]

Benjamin West displayed the history painting Queen Philippa Interceding for the Lives of the Burghers of Calais.^[4] His fellow American Mather Brown selected another scene from British history The Warrant Read to Mary, Queen of Scots.^[5] Based in Rome, Angelica Kauffman sent in the Neoclassical Bacchus Teaching the Nymphs to Make Verses.^[6] Julius Caesar Ibbetson exhibited a depiction of the 1785 ascent of the hot air balloon designed by Vincenzo Lunardi from St George's Fields in Southwark three years earlier.

William Marlow displayed cityscapes featuring the River Thames at Blackfriars Bridge, London Bridge and Westminster Bridge. In sculpture the aristocratic amateur Anne Seymour Damer drew praise for her works, as did Thomas Banks. The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery and Thomas Macklin's Poet Gallery both featured work by prominent exhibitors to the Royal Academy and offered some competition to it.^[7] Two months after the exhibition Thomas Gainsborough, who had been a founded member of the Academy but had been boycotting it since 1784, died at his home Schomberg House in Pall Mall.^[8]