Press cutting albums about the New English Art Club

Albums with press cuttings relating to the activities of the New English Art Club.

The New English Art Club was founded in 1886 by former Royal Academicians, such as John Singer Sargent, Philip Wilson Steer, John Lavery and Frederick Brown, as well as George Clausen and Alexander Stanhope Forbes, as a reaction against the restrictive and parochial attitude to the Royal Academy. Members of the Glasgow School also joined in 1887. The New English Art Club was considered to be the modern wing of British art up to the turn of the century, although admiration was for J.A.M. Whistler, Alphonse Legros and Edouard Manet rather than the more radical French Impressionists. There were about fifty members at the time of the inaugural exhibition in April 1886 at the Marlborough Gallery. In 1887 an important amendment to the constitution allowed the previous year's exhibitors, as well as members, to elect the selection jury. The Newlyn and Glasgow Schools dominated the Club until 1889 when their position was challenged by the London Impressionists led by Walter Richard Sickert, who joined in 1888 and whose work outraged some members. Sickert's criticism of the Newlyners led to their resignation in 1890 and the Glaswegians in 1891. Sickert quit in 1897 but returned in 1906. The Slade School of Art infiltrated the ranks in the 1890s with younger men such as Walter Russell, William Rothenstein, Augustus John, Harold Gilman, Spencer Gore and Lucien Pissarro. There was increasing polarization between the conservative wing of anglicized Impressionism, as practised by Clausen and younger painters (susceptible to Post-Impressionist influences) such as Robert Bevan, Charles Ginner and James Bolivar Manson, who were never invited to exhibit. Steer remained faithful, but the more reactionary faction returned to the Royal Academy in 1910 and the more progressive formed the Camden Town Group. The New English Art Club, which was the first of many independent exhibiting societies, contributed to the introduction of French studio practices of life drawing and modified plein-air techniques in more advanced London art schools, and is still in existence. [Extract from 'Handbook of Modern Painting, 1900-1980', edited by Alan Windsor].

The material has been arranged chronogically.

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See TGA20067/5/122 for later press cutting album