Royal Mail Stamps 2018 - Royal Academy of Arts, 5 June 2018

For 250 years, The Royal Academy of Arts has promoted art and artists. To mark this anniversary, Royal Mail has commissioned six of the Royal Academy’s foremost artists to provide paintings for a set of anniversary stamps.

In keeping with the Academy’s ethos of promoting artists and their work, Royal Mail worked with six very different artists, each of whom is an Academician of The Royal Academy of Arts, and was asked to design a stamp giving their own portrayal of this year’s summer exhibition at the newly refurbished Academy.

The RA was founded in 1768 by a group of forty artists and artists, who became the first Royal Academicians. Even in times of turmoil or war, the Royal Academy of Arts has hosted an annual summer exhibition, initially working from a 30-foot gallery in Pall Mall, London – and moving several times over the centuries, with the current premises being Burlington Gardens in Piccadilly.

Stamp details

Issue date: 5 June 2018

Design: Royal Mail Group Ltd

Illustrations: Grayson Perry, Fiona Rae, Norman Ackroyd, Barbara Rae, Yinka Shonibare, Tracey Emin

Stamp size: 37mm x 35mm

Print process: Lithography

Perforations: 14  x 14.5

Phosphor: Bars as appropriate

Gum: PVA 

1st – Summer Exhibition, Grayson Perry RA

1st – Queen of the Sky, Fiona Rae RA

£1.25 – St Kilda: The Great Sea Stacs, Norman Ackroyd RA

£1.25 – Inverleith Allotments and Edinburgh Castle, Barbara Rae RA

£1.55 – Queuing at the RA, Yinka Shonibare RA

£1.55 – Saying Goodbye, Tracey Emin RA