South Kensington system

Richard Burchett (1815–1875) was a British artist and educator on the fringes of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who was for over twenty years the Headmaster of what later became the Royal College of Art.

He was later described as "a prominent figure in the art-schools, a well instructed painter, and a teacher exceptionally equipped with all the learning of his craft" by his ex-pupil, the poet Austin Dobson. Burchett's pupils included the extremely varied talents of Kate Greenaway, Christopher Dresser, Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler), Sir George Clausen, Sir Luke Fildes, Gertrude Jekyll, Hubert von Herkomer, William Harbutt and Helen Allingham. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, Queen Victoria's daughter, and a talented artist, was also a student.

As an artist he achieved some reputation for large history paintings, and decorated public buildings including parts of the Palace of Westminster and the Victoria and Albert Museum, but his View across Sandown Bay, Isle of Wight is seen by modern art historians as his best work. Burchett published collections of his lectures as text-books for the South Kensington system of art education, which he helped to devise.

Burchett was born in Brighton on 30 January 1815. He attended the "London Mechanics Institute" in Chancery Lane (founded 1823, the forerunner of Birkbeck College, University of London), before in about 1841 entering the "Government School of Design", founded three years before in 1837, which he was later to head, and which eventually became the Royal College of Art. In 1845 he was a ringleader of students protesting to the Board of Trade about the teaching methods, in what was at the time a controversy that attracted a great deal of public attention, and finally a Parliamentary Committee of Enquiry. He gave evidence to this in 1846-7, by which time he had become a master at the school (the "Master of Form", from 1845), remaining on the staff until his death in 1875, from 1852 as Headmaster.

...
Wikipedia