150 Years of The Fine Art Society

WITH A 150 YEAR HISTORY that covers such breadth and variety as The Fine Art Society’s, our task to mark this anniversary year has been uniquely challenging. The FAS archive reaches back to the 1880s and gives us the facts and figures but, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the older we get, the more clearly we remember things that never happened. And so, rather than a detailed chronology, we alight upon artists and makers that our combined consciousness recalls and that describes the spirit of who we were and, more importantly, who we are now. 

Throughout we have shown artists at the vanguard. Their names are now familiar, established in history, their achievements taken for granted; but once they were the outsiders. Fashion determined that their stars rose before falling into obscurity: Augustus Pugin, Christopher Dresser, James Whistler and Jacob Epstein amongst others. Far sighted individuals, that are too many to mention here but whose alumni are within the provenance of the pictures and objects in the following pages, brought them back from anonymity. 

There are the artists who pushed against the grain. Their art speaks to us now, but once it was only their conviction and self-belief that sustained them. Whistler was the first to produce an etching in a signed, limited edition: printed and personally approved with his pencil butterfly signature on each impression. He was a key figure in the creation of the modern print market and revolutionised gallery presentation with his Arrangement in White and Yellow. Peter Blake and David Inshaw, two of the seven British Ruralists, hang together 49 years after they first showed with us in the 1976 Edinburgh International Festival. Against a backdrop of conceptualism and abstraction they pursued tradition. It’s not novel to push the agenda of underappreciated female artists but rereading past headlines such as ‘Ornamental Sculpture on Calton Hill Buildings: Edinburgh Woman’s Work' reminds us that Phyllis Bone, Mabel Royds, Clare Atwood, Anne Redpath and ceramicist Betty Blandino had to be extraordinary to persevere and succeed. They paved the way for the likes of Emily Young, Jennifer McRae and Ishbel Myerscough.

This exhibition is a microcosm of our history: the Victorian era and its Scottish genre paintings and Romantic landscapes, Pre-Raphaelites and the Neo-Gothic, the Aesthetic Movement and Arts and Crafts sitting alongside Glasgow designers and British Impressionism; to the Scottish Colourists, Neo-Romanticism, Modernism and Pop Art. Intermingling throughout are living artists, borrowing from the past but making it new: Phil Eglin, with his astonishing colossal vase, references Quattrocento maiolica and, before him, Della Robbia also looked to Renaissance Florence; Kenny Hunter considers the classical past in his young sportspeople , redefining the meaning of beauty and perfection; and Ishbel Myerscough’s striking portrayal of her son on the kitchen table recalls the canonical dead Christ by Mantegna. It is an ongoing dialogue of past and future. 

As any longstanding company knows, to get to this grand age we have endured the vicissitudes of time. To be here, to tell our tale, is the result of a hard travelled journey. However, the artworks, the artists, the collectors and enthusiasts, the conservators, the framers and all those who contribute to our ecosystem, inspire and enrich. I hope you can join us to see the exhibition in person.

Emily Walsh

Managing Director