The Royal Scottish Academy started to acquire its collection in 1831 when it decreed that all members, on reaching the status of Academician, must deposit a Diploma Work. This should be a piece of work representative of their output in the discipline of painting, sculpture or architecture. Today the Diploma Collection contains 164 paintings, 27 sculpture and 38 architectural drawings or models by Academicians past and present. The 30 images of Diploma Works reproduced here form a broad cross section of the whole Diploma Collection, covering all the disciplines and spanning the decades from the 1820s to the present day.

Other facets of the RSA's art collections include : recent works by recipients of RSA scholarships (e.g. John Kinross Scholarship, Alastair Salvesen Trust); portraits of artists; copies of Old Masters; twentieth century material bought through specific funds; and mixed collections received through gifts and bequests. The largest single bequest was that of William Gillies. Received in 1973, it contains over a thousand paintings and drawings by this artist and many others by his friends and contemporaries.