Sir James, not altogether daunted by his ill success, determined to do what he could on his own responsibility, and without aid from the Treasury. He opened a Drawing Academy, therefore, at his house in James Street, Covent Garden, on the east side, where, as a writer in 1804 describes the situation, 'the back offices and painting-room abutted upon Langford's (then Cock's) Auction Room in the Piazza,' and gave tickets to all who desired admission. It is to be feared that Sir James's generosity was somewhat abused. Certain it is that dissensions arose in his Academy as in Kneller's; that one Vandrebank headed an opposition party, and at length withdrew with his adherents to found a rival school. According to Hogarth, 'he converted an old meeting-house into an Academy, and introduced a female figure to make it more inviting to subscribers.' But this establishment did not last long, the subscriptions were not forthcoming, and the fittings and furniture of the school were seized for debt. Upon the death of Sir James, in 1734, his Academy was also closed. But a school had now become indispensably necessary to the artists of the day. After a time they forgot their differences, and again united. Hogarth had become possessed of his father-in-law Sir James Thornhill's furniture, which he was willing to lend to an association of artists founding a new school; a subscription was accordingly arranged, and a room 'large enough to admit of thirty or forty persons drawing after a naked figure,' was hired in the house of Mr. Hyde, a painter in Greyhound Court, Arundel Street, Strand. Hogarth, attributing the failure of preceding academies to an assumption of superior authority on the part of members whose subscriptions were of largest amount, proposed that all members should equally contribute to the maintenance of the establishment, and should possess equal rights of voting on all questions relative to its affairs. For many years this academy, which, in 1738, removed to more convenient premises[6] in Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane, existed in a most satisfactory manner. To this school of Hogarth's, as we may fairly consider it, the majority of the English painters of the reign of George II. and the early part of George III., owed much of their art education. Perhaps the success of the school was due in great part to the discretion and good management of the artist who had been nominated its chief instructor: George Michael Moser, a gold and silver chaser, enameller and modeller, Swiss by birth. Something also it owed to its unpretentious yet practical and utilitarian character. The artists were bound together by mutual convenience; their school, conferring no degrees, aiming at no distinction, was of equal advantage to all. It was strictly a private institution, in no way attracting to itself public notice or asking for aid from the public purse. [6] Roubiliac's first workshop.