Sass’s Drawing Academy: A Pre-Raphaelite Prep School.

   Number 10 Bloomsbury Street, former headquarters of Sass’s Drawing Academy, a feeder school for the Royal Academy. It was here that aspiring painters John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Walter Howell Deverell took their early training. Rossetti and Deverell met at Sass’s, but child prodigy Millais had already entered the Royal Academy Schools by the time they began their studies.

  Number 10 Bloomsbury Street, это бывшее помещение Sass’s Drawing Academy, подготовительного учреждения для Royal Academy. В нём честолюбивые художники John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Walter Howell Deverell получили начальную подготовку. Rossetti and Deverell встретились в  Sass’s, а вундеркинд Millais уже поступил в Royal Academy Schools ко времени, когда они только начали обучение.

     Mottoes decorated the gallery spaces: ‘Those models which have passed through the approbation of ages are intended for your imitation, and not your criticism’; ‘Blessed is he that expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed’; ‘Laborare est orare,’ [‘To work is to pray’]

  Помещения галереи украшали лозунги:" Эти модели прошли испытания веками и предназначены для имитации, а не для критицизма", "Благословен тот, кто ничего не ожидает, так как он не будет разочарован", "Laborare est orare" (Труд - это молитва).

   Though the details are foggy, it seems Sass’s dramatic eccentricities shaded tragically into madness, and minor oil painter Francis Stephen Cary took over the Academy.

     Cary’s father Henry was a famous English translator of Dante Alighieri’s Commedia and consequently a friend of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s father. William Rossetti tells us that at Sass’s, young Dante Gabriel Rossetti ‘acquired the bare rudiments of his art and … made a small reputation for eccentricity.’ One fellow-pupil recalls Cary asking Rossetti why he had not attended school the day before. ‘I had a fit of idleness’, Rossetti replied, and proceeded to distribute freshly-written sonnets among his classmates.

   Двумя годами ранее в школу был зачислен Милле. В основном в школе копировали античные модели и изучали анатомию. 

 1843 January: Rossetti at Mr. Cary's Drawing Academy (Sass's); member of a sketching club. July: Visit to Exhibition of Cartoons at Westminster Hall. 1844 Exhibition at Westminster Hall; Rossetti sees Ford Madox Brown's Wilhelmus Conquistator One of the most significant of Brown's early efforts was The Body of Harold Brought Before William the Conqueror, which survives both as a cartoon (1843–44) and as a large painting (1844–61; fig. 4).

and Adam and Eve after the Fall.  Friendship with Doughtys and Charley Ware, Americans.

    Интересно, что sass  переводится как "развязность", "нахальство", однако напротив, обучение в школе требовало самодисциплины и усидчивости, качества совершенно чуждые Данте Габриэлю.

    Данте не любил копировать, пропускал уроки и рисовал карикатуры на античные статуи,  школу в 1844 году покинул и поступил в классы при Королевской академии художеств как probationery student, а в декабре 1845 года как действительный студент.