SASS ART SCHOOL

1813 - ?

Sass's Academy, also known as Sass's Drawing Academy, was an art school in London that prepared students for the Royal Academy. Founded in 1813, by Henry Sass (1788–1844), an English artist who struggled to make a living as a painter, originally at 50 Great Russell Street, and in 1820 moved to 6 Charlotte Street in Bloomsbury. The most famous of the London art-schools it was the first school to teach its students in any methodical way, and it occupies a prominent place in the development of Victorian art. Sass had initially established his school because he was unable to make a living as a painter, producing works of only limited appeal but was an astute educator, his college developed a reputation for excellence and was a selective, fee-paying public school only taking a maximum of eighteen students, some of whom were boarders. Two years before his death Sass passed the directorship of the school to former pupil Francis Stephen Cary (1808–1880) due to his failing mental health, and who changed the name of the school to Cary’s Academy. The alumni include Sir John Everett Millais (1829–1896), Charles West Cope (1811–1890) William Powell Frith (1819–1909), William Edward Frost (1810–1877), Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882), Edward Lear (1812–1888), and Simeon (1840–1905) and Abraham Solomon (1824–1862). Suffolk artists who studied at Cass or Cary schools include George Clayton Eaton and John Mallows Youngman.