Before (and after) the establishment of the Royal Academy in London in 1768, there were numerous individuals and associations that proposed or implemented plans to create academies for the arts in Britain and Ireland. Examples can be traced to at least the early seventeenth century. To date, there is no publication that pulls together a single list of academies and/or academy schemes in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain and Ireland. In the chart below, I bring together the manuscript and secondary literature to offer a timeline of schemes, proposals, recommendations, and attempts to establish academies for the arts in Britain and Ireland between 1600 and 1770.
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