Victoria Art Gallery
Bridge Street, Bath BA2 4AT
21 January 2023 to 11 April 2023
This exhibition will combine work by current NEAC members alongside a core of over 30 paintings by illustrious past members. You'll have the chance to see major pieces by John Singer Sargent, Philip Wilson Steer, Gwen John, Walter Sickert, Stanley Spencer and Winifred Nicholson. The contemporary works on display by current members of the NEAC are for sale.
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One of the original aims of the Club, founded in 1886 by a group of rebellious young artists protesting against their repeated rejection by the Royal Academy, was to exhibit "really good modern painting".In 1937 Mary Chamot described the NEAC as "unquestionably the most vital artistic movement in English painting of the last half century."
Peter Brown is current President of the Club and requested that we organise a show at the Victoria knowing that the Gallery enjoyed a long association with it, having hosted six exhibitions of members' work between 1907 and 1947. These connections would no doubt have been fostered by the advocacy of key past members, Lord Methuen and Walter Sickert, who lived locally, as well as the etcher Katharine Kimball who purchased a work from the 1945 show and later presented it to the Gallery.
In addition to over 40 contributions by current Club members, including Peter Brown, all of which will be for sale, the 2023 Bath exhibition will feature major paintings by former exhibitors including:Gwen John, Winifred Nicholson, John Singer Sargent, Stanley Spencer, Walter Sickert, Augustus John, Dod Procter and Paul Nash.
Gwen John is represented by Bust of a girl with a bow before a pink background on loan from the Arts Council Collection. In 1900, two years after completing her studies at the Slade School of Art, Gwen John exhibited her work for the very first time. The forum in which she chose to do so was the New English Art Club. She continued to exhibit with the Club until 1911.
John Singer Sargent's At Torre Galli: Ladies in a Garden of 1910, on loan from the Royal Academy, exhibits all the Impressionist flair one would expect from a close friend of Claude Monet. After moving to London in 1885-86, Sargent quickly found a sympathetic exhibiting arena with the New English Art Club, with whom he shared an abiding love of modern French art. He served on the committee of the Club in 1887 and 1889 and, despite his American origins, he extended the association into the twentieth century.
Sir Stanley Spencer was one of the most distinguished artists associated with the New English Art Club, having been elected a member in the 1920s. His important portrait of his second wife to be, the painter Patricia Preece, dates from 1933 and is on loan from Southampton Art Gallery. The artwork documents not only the two artists' fateful relationship, but also their joint connections with the NEAC.
Walter Sickert was one of the most consistent NEAC exhibitors, showing over 130 paintings between 1888 and 1939. His portrait of Celia, Lady Brunel dates from about 1906 and typically defies any expectations of the sitter that her attractive features would be emphasized. Instead he remained committed to subdued lighting and spontaneity. The sitter, who later lived in Bath's Royal Crescent, was the grand-daughter of Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
VIEW / BUY CURRENT NEAC MEMBERS' WORKS FROM THE SHOW ONLINE