The Slade

The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, United Kingdom. It is world-renowned and is consistently ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as a department of UCL's Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

The school traces its roots back to 1868 when lawyer and philanthropist Felix Slade (1788–1868) bequeathed funds to establish three Chairs in Fine Art, to be based at Oxford University, Cambridge University and University College London, where six studentships were endowed.

Distinguished past teachers include Henry Tonks, Wilson Steer, Randolph Schwabe, William Coldstream, Andrew Forge, Lucian Freud, Phyllida Barlow, John Hilliard, Bruce McLean, Alfred Gerrard.

Edward Allington is currently a Professor of Fine Art and Head of Graduate Sculpture.

Two of its most important periods were immediately before, and immediately after, the turn of the twentieth century, described by Henry Tonks as its two 'crises of brilliance'. The first included the students Augustus John, William Orpen and Percy Wyndham Lewis; the second – which has been chronicled in David Boyd Haycock's A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War (Old Street Publishing, 2009) – included the students Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson and Sir Stanley Spencer.