Private Collecting, Exhibitions, and the Shaping of Art History in London

The Burlington Fine Arts Club

Stacey J. Pierson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315311913
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Kunst
• Subtopic: Kunstgeschichte

The Burlington Fine Arts Club was founded in London in 1866 as a gentlemen's club with a singular remit – to exhibit members' art collections. Exhibitions were proposed, organized, and furnished by a group of prominent members of British society who included aristocrats, artists, bankers, politicians, and museum curators. Exhibitions at their grand house in Mayfair brought many private collections and collectors to light, using members' social connections to draw upon the finest and most diverse objects available. Through their unique mode of presentation, which brought museum-style display and interpretation to a grand domestic-style gallery space, they also brought two forms of curatorial and art historical practice together in one unusual setting, enabling an unrestricted form of connoisseurship, where new categories of art were defined and old ones expanded. The history of this remarkable group of people has yet to be presented and is explored here for the first time. Through a framework of exhibition themes ranging from Florentine painting to Ancient Egyptian art, a study of lenders, objects, and their interpretation paints a picture of private collecting activities, connoisseurship, and art world practice that is surprisingly diverse and interconnected.

Part 1

Introduction

Introduction
A New Gentlemen’s Club for London

Chapter Contents

• History and a Description of the Club, its Activities, and Functions

• Location and Permanent Premises

• Exhibitions

• Membership

• Taste in Collecting and Display

• Conclusion

Burlington Fine Arts Club, 17, Savile-row, W. — Is intended to bring together amateurs, collectors, and others interested in art; to afford ready means for consultation between persons of special knowledge and experience in matters relating to the fine arts; and to provide accommodation for showing and comparing rare works in the session of the members and friends. To provide in the reading room periodicals, books, and catalogues, foreign as well as English, having reference to art. To make arrangements in the gallery and rooms of the club for the exhibition of pictures, original drawings, engravings, and rare books, enamels ceramic wares, coins, plate, and other valuable works. To hold, in addition to the above, once in the year or oftener, special exhibitions which shall have for their object the elucidation of some school, master, or specific art. Members to have the privilege of introducing friends to these special collections. To render the club a centre where occasionally conversazioni may be held of an art-character. Members to have the power of introducing two visitors, ladies or gentlemen. To provide, in addition to the above art objects, the ordinary accommodation and advantages of a London club. The club possesses a valuable library of books of reference on art. The entrance fee is £5 5s., and the subscription £5 5s. The power of election is vested in the committee, and is by ballot.

Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens’s Dictionary of London, 1879

History and a Description of the Club, its Activities, and Functions

The Founding of a New Members’ Club

In April 1866, a group of gentlemen got together to found a new club for art collectors.¹ It was modelled on their favourite gentlemen’s clubs and was designed as a counterpoint to a group founded earlier, which was perceived as having lost its direction. Most of the founder members of the new club were members of the earlier group, which was called the Fine Arts Club and had been founded in 1856. The Fine Arts Club began as the Collector’s Club and was founded by the first curator (called ‘superintendent’) for Art Collections at the new South Kensington Museum (later the Victoria and Albert Museum, V&A), John Charles Robinson (1824–1913), who was an instrumental figure in the Museum’s early history, helping to define its collecting and display remit.² The Collector’s Club was based in the museum and included among its members the V&A’s founder, Henry Cole (1808–1882), as well as Baron Marochetti (1805–1867), a sculptor and diplomat,³ and the Marchese d’Azeglio (Vittorio Emanuele Taparelli, 1816–1890), who had been the Sardinian Ambassador to London.⁴ The formation of the Collector’s Club was announced in the Art Journal in 1857:

The Collector’s Club. A new society of amateurs of vertu has just been formed under this title; consisting solely of such gentlemen as collect for their own tastes, objects of antiquity and are not dealers therein … Baron Marochetti gave the use of his studio for the preliminary meeting, at which a large assemblage gathered and Sir A. Fountaine’s antique majolica formed an important point of attraction.⁵

The new club stated that its purpose was: ‘to hold regular conversazione where objects of art were to be exhibited’.⁶ As its historian Ann Eatwell noted:

These exhibitions would form unparalleled opportunities for viewing private collections that had rarely been seen before. The unlocking of specimens from rich private sources and the meeting of collectors at gatherings where information could be exchanged, comparisons drawn and expertise and knowledge of objects gained were the real if unspecified intentions, behind the club’s formation.⁷

The term ‘conversazione’ was a peculiarly nineteenth-century one which in England at that time was used to describe society gatherings or ‘soirées’ associated with the arts and sciences.⁸ One such event was depicted in a famous painting in the National Portrait Gallery: ‘The Royal Academy Conversazione, 1891’, by G. Grenville Manton which shows just how formal yet social such events were (Figure I.1).

The Fine Arts Club (FAC), as the Collector’s Club was known from later in 1857 onwards, while clearly social, had two undeclared additional functions: to provide a venue for the development of interest in and knowledge of decorative arts (none such existed before its founding) and to support the development of the future V&A, as Robinson needed to cultivate collectors and promote the subject areas with which the museum was concerned.⁹ The FAC should be seen as supporting these aims, even though its existence (and that of its successor) inherently contradicted the public educational aims of the new museum. Robinson, and Henry Cole, believed it was a national duty to encourage collecting and that museums were in the service of this, as well as education in taste.¹⁰ The fulfilment of such aims required objects and collectors, so Robinson used the new club as a tool to support the museum. Through its successor, the club became much more than that, however.

To enhance its effectiveness, the FAC expanded rapidly to include around 100 members (up to 200 in the 1860s), mostly men, as was the custom at that time, and its programme of meetings and activities was established early on.¹¹ Members were expected to exhibit their objects for discussion where the meetings were held and many loaned them to other exhibitions, including at the South Kensington Museum, most notably the Loan Exhibition of 1862 which attracted over 900,000 visitors, thus demonstrating the vital role of the club for Robinson. Members of the Club were on the exhibition committee and Robinson was its director and organizer.¹²

Figure I.1 The Royal Academy Conversazione, 1891, G. Grenville Manton, 1855–1932, Pen, ink and gouache. 45 × 61.4 cm, NPG 2820

Source: © National Portrait Gallery, London.

He was clearly not satisfied with the club’s potential, principally because, as Eatwell noted, the FAC ‘became a victim of its success’. Its meetings were very popular, took place during the London season, and were increasingly attended by large numbers of non-members, thus impeding its original stated purpose. It also had no permanent premises so members themselves were obliged to host the large-scale, fashionable events.¹³ Along with Robinson, a number of key members of the FAC became dissatisfied and decided to set up a new, more focussed and ‘serious’ club with premises, using the gentlemen’s club model. In 1866, therefore, in response to the seemingly frivolous and ineffectual nature of the FAC, a preliminary meeting was held in April to discuss the formation of a new club, which was agreed by those who attended.¹⁴ A provisional committee was created at this meeting and this was followed by a first general meeting in June of 1866, at 49 Lower Grosvenor Street, London, the home of one of the members. The provisional committee consisted of five members, one acting as chair: J. C. Robinson, Ralph Wornum (1812–1877), the print collector Richard Fisher (1809–1890), who was then closely associated with the Print Room of the British Museum, and William Smith (1808–1876), who seems to have resigned shortly afterwards.¹⁵ The chair was the Marchese d’Azeglio.¹⁶ At the first general meeting in June, a permanent committee was elected,¹⁷ and was tasked with choosing a name and preparing rules for the new club.¹⁸ Membership was stated to be 79 at that time.

Premises were discussed at the very first preliminary meeting in April of 1866, and the committee proposed leasing premises from a Mr Toovey who had a building at 177 Piccadilly. As the new club was to be located close to Burlington House, this location gave its name to the club: the Burlington Fine Arts Club (BFAC, hereafter also ‘the Club’).¹⁹ The name was officially reported at a subsequent meeting, in July 1866, and a report was given which described Toovey’s proposed terms as:

rooms, supplies provided, refreshments, etc. Toovey to receive the amounts collected for entrance fees and annual subs (collected by him too); agreement with Toovey can be terminated if number of members falls below 100 in the 2nd year; if members exceed 150, then Toovey will only get the annual subscriptions.²⁰

The acceptance of these terms was presented in a proposed circular to members that also included a description of the new Club’s terms and conditions:

The Burlington Fine Arts Club

At a general meeting of the Members of the Club held at 177 Piccadilly, on the 20th of July, 1866, the Report of the Committee appointed at the meeting of the 5th of June, 1866, was read and it was unanimously resolved, -

First, to accept Mr Toovey’s offer of his premises over the ground floor at 177 Piccadilly, and to establish the club therein.

Secondly, that the rooms shall be opened for the reception of members, if possible, on the 1st of December next, or, at the latest, on the 1st of January, 1867.

Thirdly, that the members be requested immediately to pay the entrance fee of five guineas, and the first year’s subscription of five guineas, to the account of the Burlington Fine Arts Club, at the London and Westminster Bank, St. James Square.

The above payment of ten guineas to entitle to all privileges of the club up to the 1st of January 1868.²¹

The objectives of the Club and the rules and regulations were defined and drafted by the committee over the summer. In the first printed set of Rules and Regulations (1866), it was stated that the new club ‘is formed for the purpose of bringing together amateurs, collectors, and persons interested in the Fine Arts; and for the exhibiting and comparing the acquisitions made from time to time by the Members’.²² This dual purpose, social gatherings and the display of members’ collections in organized exhibitions, a development from FAC practice, was in fact pioneering and unique, as no other private members club was doing this, including those focussing on the arts.

The ...