Victorian London: Mapping the Emergence of the Modern Art Gallery: Pamela M. Fletcher

The Fine Art Society

The Fine Art Society was founded in 1876, and quickly established a reputation as one of the most respected commercial galleries in London. The firm published reproductive engravings, and exhibited and sold paintings and drawings, primarily by British artists, including John Everett Millais, Frederic Leighton, Elizabeth Thompson,  Helen Allingham, and James McNeill Whistler. The gallery was one of the first to include substantial critical essays in their exhibition catalogues, including essays by John Ruskin and Frederic G. Stephens.

Address: 148 New Bond St

Start Date: 1876

End Date: present

Dealer: Marcus Bourne Huish (1843-1921)

Selected exhibitions

For exhibitions, see: “Exhibitions associated with: Fine Art Society”
http://www.exhibitionculture.arts.gla.ac.uk/gall_exhlist.php?gid=3
Exhibition Culture in London 1878-1908, University of Glasgow

Exhibition catalogues: National Art Library, London

Sources

Faberman, Hilarie. “‘Best Shop in London’: The Fine Art Society and the Victorian Art Scene.” In The Grosvenor Gallery: A Palace of Art in Victorian England. Eds. Susan Casteras and Colleen Denney. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1996.

Fletcher, Pamela. “Shopping for Art: The Rise of the Commercial Art Gallery, 1850s-90s.” In The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850-1939. Eds. Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. 47-64.

Fletcher, Pamela and Anne Helmreich. “Selected galleries, dealers and exhibition spaces in London, 1850-1939.” In The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850-1939. Eds. Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. 302.