By the time of Victoria's accession the Royal Academy dominated British art, with the annual Royal Academy Summer Exhibition the most important event in the arts world. The Royal Academy also controlled the prestigious Royal Academy art schools, which taught with a very narrow focus on approved techniques. Painting in Raphael's style had proved commercially successful for artists serving a nobility primarily interested in family portraiture, military scenes and scenes from history, religion and classical mythology, but by the time of Victoria's accession was coming to be seen as a dead end. The destruction of the Houses of Parliament in late 1834, and the subsequent competitions to select artists to decorate its replacement, threw into sharp focus the lack of competent British artists able to paint historic and literary topics, which at the time were considered the most important form of painting. From 1841 the new, and highly influential, satirical magazine "Punch" increasingly ridiculed the Royal Academy and contemporary British artists.