ONE of Britain’s most distinguished artists, Peter Blake, took the dramatic step of resigning from the Royal Academy of Arts yesterday.

The Pop artist is outraged by the decision on Thursday to expel his fellow academician, Brendan Neiland, from the ranks. Blake told The Times yesterday: “My main reason is that I no longer want to be a part of a group that would do that to someone.”

Academicians voted out Mr Neiland after his resignation last summer as Keeper of the Royal Academy Schools, where generations of leading British artists, including J. M. W. Turner, had trained. There were allegations that thousands of pounds, for which Professor Neiland was responsible, were missing from the accounts.

He was ousted after a damning report by a High Court judge on the matter. Mr Justice Moses, who prosecuted the Matrix Churchill company in the arms-to-Iraq affair, had said that Professor Neiland “does not deny . . . that he benefited personally from £18,950 in cash out of funds which belonged to the Royal Academy, that by an account into which he diverted money he deliberately evaded the Royal Academy’s financial control”.

Only one other artist has suffered the indignity of being stripped of the distinguished academician title. James Barry was ejected in 1799 for attacking Sir Joshua Reynolds, a former academy president.

Blake, who taught Professor Neiland at the Royal College of Art, is convinced of the man’s innocence: “He did not do anything criminal. What he did was silly.” He believes that it would be impossible to account for everything unless Professor Neiland had kept every receipt: “Who could?” Professor Neiland, he added, is guilty only of having been slightly obsessed by the schools. Having raised a lot of money for their cause, he had become frustrated that it was going into the academy’s general funds, rather than the schools themselves.

That was his reason for setting up a separate account, Blake said. “In any institution, whether a school or the services, the only way to get things done is to go around rules — you don’t break them, you go around them.”

Blake, 72, accuses the academy of condemning Professor Neiland from the start. He also attacked Mr Justice Moses for not even interviewing him: “How can you write a report without speaking to him? They treated Brendan as though he was someone working in a bank who had embezzled money. He didn’t embezzle anything. They knew about the account. He was just extremely foolish. Everyone has said that.”

Blake became an academician 30 years ago. His decision to leave is not painful, he said: “The place has changed so much. It’s not the academy I joined. It’s a different institution now. When I joined it, it was run by seven people. It’s now run by close to 300.”

Professor Neiland himself said: “I was promised an independent inquiry. It never happened. I was promised the chance to prove my innocence. They refused me access to academy staff and my records.”

Professor Neiland’s most prominent supporters are believed to include Ivor Abrahams, Gillian Ayres, John Bellany, Ralph Brown, Sir Anthony Caro, Gus Cummins, Jennifer Dickson, Ken Draper, Peter Freeth, Bryan Kneale, Sonia Lawson, John Partridge, Tom Phillips, Michael Sandle and Sir Colin St John Wilson.

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