On a winter’s day in 1768, architect Sir William Chambers visited the king, George III. He brought with him a petition signed by 36 artists and architects including himself, all of whom were seeking permission to “establish a society for promoting the Arts of Design”. What’s more, they also proposed an annual exhibition and a School of Design. Lucky for us, the King said yes. And so the Royal Academy of Arts, the Royal Academy Schools, and what you know today as the Summer Exhibition, were born. The new Royal Academicians set up shop in Pall Mall, renting a gallery that was just 30 feet long.

In 1775, Sir William Chambers won the commission to design the new Somerset House. It would become, among other things, our new home and first official residence. The Exhibition Room was a thing of beauty; 32 feet high and situated at the top of a steep winding staircase, it was described by contemporary literary critic Joseph Baretti as “undoubtedly at the date, the finest gallery for displaying pictures so far built”.

In the 1830s, we moved to Trafalgar Square to share premises with the newly-founded National Gallery. However, with space at a premium, we were on the move again in 1867 to Burlington House, where we remain to this day. Fortunately, our President at the time, Francis Grant, drove a hard bargain and secured our new home for an annual rent of £1 for 999 years.

The story of our second President is a fascinating one. Benjamin West was born in Pennsylvania in 1738 and grew up in a world where art was little known. But with pioneering spirit, he travelled to Europe for his education and found early success in Rome.

Later arriving in England, he became a close friend of the King and was appointed his “History Painter”. He never returned to America, but is considered the founding father of the American school of painting. He was so popular that he was elected President by his fellow members with just one opposing vote. He also had a first-rate eye for talent and once comforted a downhearted young Constable after he’d had a work rejected by the Academy with the words, “Don’t be disheartened young man, we shall hear more of you again; you must have loved nature before you could have painted this.”

The beginning of the Victorian period saw us admit our youngest ever student to the RA Schools, ten-year-old John Everett Millais in 1839. He was immediately given the rather unoriginal nickname ‘The Child’.

He went on to become one of the most successful artists of the 19th century and a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. The Brotherhood hoped to emulate the art of late medieval and early Renaissance Europe, characterised by intricate detail, bright colours and truth to nature. Although the movement’s activity lasted little more than five years, its influence on British art continues to this day.

In 1896, Millais was elected President of the RA, but sadly, it was doomed to be a short tenure. He was in poor health at the time, and just six months after his election he died and was buried in Painters’ Corner of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Our doors remained open during World War Two, just as they had during the First World War, but our President at the time, Edwin Lutyens, had some radical ideas about how London should be rebuilt after the conflict. The RA Planning Committee’s London Replanned report proposed schemes including a road bridge across the Thames that would obliterate Charing Cross Station, an enormous roundabout behind St Martin-in-the-Fields and the demolition of the existing Opera House in Covent Garden to make way for a new music and dramatic centre.

Lutyens’ ideas may have been unpopular with most, but our next President, Alfred Munnings, didn’t do much better at endearing himself to his colleagues or the public…

The 1970s saw a period of renewal, with the election of one of our most enterprising Presidents, Sir Hugh Casson. Casson had always been one to embrace change and in 1948, he had been appointed Director of Architecture at the Festival of Britain. Relishing the challenge, he set out to celebrate peace and modernity through working with other young architects, including 39-year-old Leslie Martin, who designed the modernist Royal Festival Hall. Casson’s role in the Festival of Britain was a huge success and he was knighted in 1952.

As President of the RA, he began our Friends of the RA membership scheme in 1977, the first of its kind in Europe. Friends come to all our exhibitions for free, enjoy all-day access to the Keeper’s House, are invited to special events and receive the RA Magazine. They’re some of our most loyal supporters; we’d be lost without them.

If Munnings’ rejection of modern art was considered controversial in the 1940s, it was nothing compared what happened when the RA embraced it in the 1990s. Drawn from the collection of Charles Saatchi, Sensation opened in September 1997 and sparked a media frenzy thanks to its inclusion of deliberately shocking works, including most famously a portrait of the murderer Myra Hindley by Marcus Harvey. In the furore that followed, several Royal Academicians resigned, but over 300,000 people came to see the show, proving the popular appeal of contemporary art.

In the following years, the resigned RAs returned (well, most of them) and many of the exhibited artists have since become RAs themselves, including Tracey Emin, Gary Hume and Jenny Saville.