New English Art Club

The NEAC was founded in 1886 as an exhibiting society. It was set up in opposition to the restrictive attitudes of the traditionalists within the Royal Academy, particularly towards the new art movements developing in France. Among the founding members were many artists such as John Singer Sargent, Philip Wilson Steer, Frederick Brown, and Stanhope Forbes, who had studied and worked in France and had been greatly influenced by the Neo-Impressionists. The inaugural exhibition of the club was held at the Marlborough Gallery in April 1886, by which time there were about fifty members. They were joined by the members of the Glasgow School in the following year, and a year later, in 1888, by Walter Sickert. As a student of Whistler, Sickert had studied in France and been greatly influenced by Degas, and over the next two decades, he was to become one of the most reactionary and influential figures on the British art scene. His approach and criticisms soon led to the resignation of Stanhope Forbes and the “Newlynners” in 1890 and the Glasgow School in 1891.

By the turn of the century, however, the NEAC was no longer representing the avant-garde of English art – Sickert himself left the club in 1897, returning in 1906, finally resigning in 1917 – and by the time Post Impressionism was introduced to London in 1910, the stance of the NEAC had become as hidebound as that of the RA. Progressives such as Sickert had already begun to form their breakaway groups such as Fitzroy Street Group and Camden Town Group and these, in turn, spawned the London Group and the Vorticists. Nevertheless, despite the influx of the many and varied modern art movements, the NEAC has survived throughout the 20th century as one of the most prestigious and respected exhibiting societies of the British art world. Its annual exhibition, which is open to non-members and held at the Mall Galleries in November or December each year, remains one of the highlights of the British art calendar.

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New English Art Club: Catalogue
Number of Artists referenced: 1,809