Exhibitions

John McLean

Momentino 20 Apr - 18 May 2023 London John was a truly lyrical abstract artist. He spoke of his work as like singing and dancing. To walk into a room of large-scale canvases by him is to be uplifted. In these small works on paper, the work is no less lyrical. Indeed, the media used lends the abstraction... Read more

Still Life

17 Feb - 6 Apr 2023 London Read more

The Print Show

12 Jan - 17 Feb 2023 London Read more

Winter at The Fine Art Society

28 Nov - 22 Dec 2022 London Read more

Waistel Cooper 1921-2003

Part Two 29 Sep - 18 Nov 2022 London Read more

David Eustace

Memento Mori 30 Jun - 26 Aug 2022 London “Many celebrate the cherry tree blossom in full bloom, while others grow disappointed when its flowers last only a few weeks, having waited so long to witness such splendour. Many celebrate not the bloom but the fragility and impermanence, so splendid, with anticipation and longing. They savour the moment, knowing... Read more

The Glasgow Boys

30 Jun - 26 Aug 2022 London When the Glasgow Boys rose to prominence in the 1880s, there was a sense of wonder at how a group of Scottish painters could hold such sway in the academies, salons and secessions of western Europe and North America. The group’s firm grasp on modernity brought a new lease of... Read more

Peter de Francia 1921-2012

4 Mar - 2 Apr 2022 Edinburgh, London Peter de Francia’s vibrant palette, dynamic compositions and evocative subjects reflect a style of painting that developed out of Picassos’ modernism. Some are dark and others funny. Best known for large-scale, sometimes violent depictions of combat and struggle, de Francia also gave attention to bucolic scenes of industry and recreation.... Read more

Waistel Cooper 1921-2003

Part one 14 Jan - 25 Feb 2022 Edinburgh, London 2021 marked the centenary year of artist-potter Waistel Cooper's birth. It seemed fitting that this was the moment The Fine Art Society, with its long history of dealing in decorative and applied arts, acquired a large single owner collection of Waistel's ceramics, with over one hundred pieces dating from the... Read more

Scotland

2 - 22 Dec 2021 London For a small country, and one whose nation school was late in developing, the history of Scotland’s visual arts is particularly rich and diverse. After The Act of Union in 1707, the newly founded image of Great Britain provoked Scotland into defining its own identity. For many Scots, The Act... Read more

James McBey

Etchings and Watercolours 11 - 26 Nov 2021 London 'He began at dawn; he spent hours at the end of the Rialto or at a table under the shady colonnade of the Chioggia Cafe in the Piazzetta making pen and ink notes of figures; or in a gondola on the canals or the Giudecca, making studies of shipping, of... Read more

Through the Eyes of Anthony Whishaw RA

4 Oct - 26 Nov 2021 London This Autumn, The Fine Art Society in London will be holding a large retrospective show of nonagenarian Royal Academician, Anthony Whishaw, with works from the 1950s through to the present day. They will map the artist's unique and mercurial vision across his long career, and recreate a sense of his... Read more

Nicola Tassie

Sweet Dreams 1 - 24 Sep 2021 London Nicola Tassie is a ceramicist who initially studied painting at the Central School of Art. The crossover between the painted image and mark making in clay is a continuing preoccupation in her practice. Her wall-mounted ‘slip pillows’ playfully evoke a painted canvas on the wall, and present us with a... Read more

Summer

The Fine Art Society in London 1 Aug - 1 Sep 2021 London 'The Fine Art Society...where beautiful things are as plentiful as blackberries in September' In 1896, not twenty-five years after the company had opened, the arts editor of The Sketch penned this lovely phrase, describing our galleries as he was guided around admiring 'the many prints, curios and pictures there enshrined.'... Read more

Hylton Nel at Eighty

17 Jun - 30 Jul 2021 London For the London Art Week 2021, displayed in our gallery on Soho's Carnaby Street, we are thrilled to present Hylton Nel at Eighty. Celebrating Hylton's 80th birthday year and over five decades working as an 'artist-potter', this exhibition is also significant as it marks his relationship with The Fine Art... Read more

John Armstrong

An Artist's Themes 17 Jun - 31 Jul 2021 London John Armstrong was an artist on the peripheries: unlabelled, and unallied to any artistic movement. His career is a peculiar, rich and varied one devoted to surface texture, allegory and symbolism. This small collection of works does not seek to demonstrate the breadth of Armstrong's career, but provides an insight... Read more

Anthony Whishaw RA: Downstream Flood

4 - 6 Jun 2021 London Anthony Whishaw RA claims no association with any particular art movement, stating instead that ‘each painting and work on paper makes its own separate demands’. His work deals with explorations of memory and experience. On the edge of representation, varying in intent, scale and depiction, it seeks to reconcile illusion... Read more

Spring '21

12 Apr - 31 May 2021 London Celebrating our return to the gallery on Carnaby Street, Spring '21 also revisits a grand old Fine Art Society tradition of holding mixed shows comprised of decorative arts and furniture alongside paintings, prints and sculpture. Held across two floors of our new Georgian townhouse gallery, Spring '21 represents the diversity of artwork that pass through the gallery from late nineteenth century artworks from James Whistler and Walter Greaves, to early twentieth century pictures by Walter Sickert the British Post-Impressiosnts Clare Atwood and Spencer Gore. Eric Ravilious' 1937 lithograph, Newhaven Harbour, leads our print offering, alongside other works on paper by Modern British Artists including Maxwell Ashby Armfield, Edward Bawden, Augustus Edwin John, Richard Eurich, and David Bomberg. Keith Coventry tops the bill with his Hertford Estate, 1996, which originates from a series of works that nod to late-twentieth century experiences of the modernist utopian approach to architecture of post-war Britain. Read more

John McLean

Forza: prints 14 Jan - 27 Mar 2021 London As a gallery whose offering spans the centuries, the radical shift in the way our spaces look with John’s work always gives us an uplifting and refreshing surprise. The Boston Pictures, our penultimate show with John, felt as if the marks were dancing along the walls; the effect on visitors... Read more

Nicole Farhi

Couples 20 Nov - 23 Dec 2020 London The Fine Art Society in London is delighted to announce Couples, an exhibition of miniature busts of the leading voices of 20th century female liberation that guide us through the history of women’s sexual emancipation, sculpted and painted over the last seven months by Nicole Farhi MRSS. These couples were... Read more

Twenty Twenty

2 Oct - 14 Nov 2020 London The Fine Art Society is now almost 145 years old and has survived two world wars, depressions, a financial crash and, most recently, a global pandemic. The decision to relinquish our original building on New Bond Street was a sad one, but necessary. With the slate wiped clean, we have... Read more

Simple Forms

The language of British Abstraction 3 - 25 Sep 2020 London 'The creative spirit is one, indivisible goal, and the greatness of a civilization rests on achieving a creative unit. Unity does not mean, however, uniformity as each artist should be the expression not only of a common spirit but also of a personality... so much more meaningfully the more unconsciously.'... Read more

British Realism

1900-1935 30 Jul - 1 Sep 2020 London 'Realism is a fine, manly, practical word that appeals to everyone as safe and satisfactory' -- Wyndam Lewis Since the emergence of Post-War abstraction realism in art, particularly in Britain, has often been written off as retrograde and the anthethis to Modernism. Yet the Realist movement itself, which started in... Read more

James McNeill Whistler

The Original Printmaker 19 Jun - 25 Jul 2020 London James McNeill Whistler was one of the first and most illustrious artists to show in our gallery’s history. The Fine Art Society was the scene of one of his greatest triumphs, the exhibition he called Arrangement in White and Yellow held in 1883. It was a revolutionary show conceived by... Read more

Gerald Brockhurst

A Private Collection 1 - 28 Feb 2018 London Comprising works created between 1920 and 1945, this private collection covered the greater part of the artist’s printmaking practice. Born in Birmingham in 1890, Brockhurst showed promising signs of his artistic talent while very young: the then headmaster of the Birmingham School of Art even announced he had discovered ”a... Read more

Alan Davie

Abstracts 8 - 29 Jan 2018 London Providing an opportunity to consider the breadth of the career of Alan Davie (1920-2014) , the exhibition presented a retrospective view of the artist’s work over six decades from 1945 to 2005. The twenty-two works reflected Davie’s early interest in jazz music, and the spontaneous and automatic practice of painting... Read more

Ethel Gabain

A Distinctive Look 27 Nov 2017 - 3 Jan 2018 London This exhibition highlighted many of Ethel Gabain’s characteristic lithographs. It followed on from a successful show earlier this year that introduced her work to a new audience, and re-established her reputation as one of the most skilled and engaging artist-printmakers of her generation. For this exhibition the gallery brought together... Read more

British Design

27 Nov 2017 - 3 Jan 2018 London From Edward William Godwin's remodelling of the gallery's facade in 1881 to James Whistler's redesigning of the gallery space for his seminal exhibition Arrangement in White and Yellow, the gallery has held a long engagment with designers and the decorative arts. The gallery's history represents an intersection of these two... Read more

Lasting Impressions

British Prints from the 19th and 20th Centuries 3 Oct - 21 Nov 2017 London Ranging from James McNeill Whistler's visionary etchings of the late 19th century to Victor Pasmore's abstract screenprints of the 1960s, this exhibition presented 19th and 20th century prints by the following British artists: Frank Auerbach, Edward Bawden, Robert Bevan, Edmund Blampied, Gerald Brockhurst, Edward Calvert, David Young Cameron, Geoffrey Clarke,... Read more

John Byrne

Lullaby of Broadway 12 - 29 Sep 2017 London Lullaby of Broadway was the fifth solo exhibition of acclaimed Scottish painter John Byrne at our London gallery. The title of the show is a song known to many. First sung by the Dorsey Brothers in the musical, The Gold Diggers of 1935, the Andrew Sisters took it up a... Read more

John Copley

The Etchings 12 - 29 Sep 2017 London The etchings of John Copley possess an oddity of vision and a highly personal approach to the human body. Ranging from his Mediterranean landscapes and subjects from 1927 to the poignant and innovative self-portrait of his final years, the exhibition presented a varied selection of his works, allowing for his... Read more

Modern British Sculpture

20 Jun - 7 Jul 2017 London Modern British Sculpture presented an exhibition of works spanning the whole of the twentieth century. Featuring sculptures made from a variety of media and techniques: from academic cast bronzes, to primal stone carvings, to hand-modeled post-war assemblages, these works reflect the rapid trajectory British sculpture over the course of... Read more

Modern British Women

6 - 28 Feb 2017 London Featuring works by 14 artists, the exhibition sought to uncover and emblazon the work of both celebrated and lesser-known artists working throughout the twentieth century. With a diverse range of mediums, subjects and artistic styles represented, the broad scope of this exhibition provided an insight into how women artists worked... Read more

GLUCK

6 - 28 Feb 2017 London The Fine Art Society was pleased to present a major exhibition of the British painter, Gluck (1895-1978). Featuring 32 works including Gluck’s most important painting, Medallion (1937), the exhibition explored the fascinating life, work and legacy of one of the most pioneering artists of her generation. Born into the wealthy... Read more

John Copley

An Observer 6 - 23 Dec 2016 London The prolific printmaker John Copley (1875-1950), already established as a lithographer, turned to etching in 1917. For the last 20 years of his life it was his preferred medium. Copley, at a time when etching had become unfashionable, enjoyed the lack of constraints and freedom of utterance etching permitted, as... Read more

British Design

6 Dec 2016 - 5 Jan 2017 London Following on from the success of The John Scott Collection exhibition series, The Fine Art Society presented British Design, a celebration of British designers, manufacturers and styles from the late-nineteenth century through the twentieth century. The exhibition included furniture, textile, glass, metal and ceramic design by: A.W. Pugin, John Hardman,... Read more

Gerald Laing 1936-2011

A Retrospective 19 Sep - 13 Oct 2016 London Gerald Laing 1936-2011 present the first major retrospective, featuring paintings, sculptures and prints spanning the entire career of the British pop artist and sculptor Gerald Laing (1936 - 2011), on the fifth anniversary of his death. . Considered one of the most important artists of his generation, Gerald Laing is... Read more

Samuel Palmer and The Fine Art Society

6 Jun - 7 Jul 2016 London Samual Palmer died in 1881 and the gallery staged his memorial exhibition, a major retrospective which was of great importance in establishing his lasting reputation. It was also the pattern for many subsequent shows in the gallery, which is credited with the virtual invention of the one-man-show. Whistler was celebrated... Read more

Counterpoint: Modern Realism 1910-1950

6 - 26 May 2016 London The story of modern art in Britain was often presented traditionally as a narrative journey towards abstraction or gestural expression, exemplified by the work of Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, or the St Ives painters. But alongside this brilliant burning path ran many other contrapuntal threads, each of... Read more

Laura Knight

From a Private Collection 6 - 26 May 2016 London This exhibition included a collection of 28 etchings and aquatints by acclaimed British artist, Laura Knight, which had been held in private hands since being purchased in the 1970’s. Created between 1922 and 1936, the works vividly depicted the intimate and private world of women, and the life of the... Read more

James McNeill Whistler

Prints 5 - 28 Apr 2016 London In 2016 The Fine Art Society staged the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of prints by James McNeill Whistler for 45 years at its New Bond Street gallery. Part of the The Fine Art Societys 140th anniversary celebration, this show featured one of the first and most illustrious artists represented... Read more

The Print Show

Artist Printmakers 1800-1975 15 Feb - 10 Mar 2016 London From William Blake's engraving of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims in 1809-10 to Howard Hodgkin's abstract hand-coloured lithographs of the 1970s, the exhibition will spanned 175 years of artist printmakers production and include 128 works by 49 artists, including Sybil Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Robert Austin, Stanley Roy Badmin, Edward Bawden, Robert Bevan,... Read more

The Art Jeweller

From Castellani to Knox 9 - 13 Nov 2015 London The Art Jeweller presented an exhibition of nineteenth and early twentieth-century jewellery, in the line of previous jewellery designers exhibitions held at The Fine Art Society between 1900 and 1987. Many of the artists in this exhibition have become familiar to our patrons over the years. Jessie M. King and... Read more

The Glasgow Boys

2 Oct - 14 Nov 2015 London The Glasgow Boys presented a selected exhibition of paintings by those artists central to the group and others who, inspired by the vanguard's daring and rejection of the establishment. Inspired by the painters of the Barbizon, the Hague School and French Impressionism, these artists worked in a modern European way.... Read more

Venice

An Exhibition of Drawings, Paintings and Prints 1 - 29 Jul 2015 London Venice was celebrated in this exhibition at The Fine Art Society, in which London’s oldest commercial gallery combined with Charles Beddington, Canaletto expert and Old Master specialist, and Hill-Stone Inc. from New York. The exhibition included six of James McNeill Whistler’s Venice etchings and works by other major 19th century... Read more

The John Scott Collection

Architect-Designers: From Pugin to Voysey 3 - 25 Jun 2015 London Architect-Designers: From Pugin to Voysey, at The Fine Art Societys New Bond Street galeries, was the seventh and last exhibition showcasing the renowned John Scott Collection. The selection presented some of the finest pieces in the collection, illustrating a critical period of British design when architects showed that there was... Read more

Unity Spencer

Lucky to be an Artist 24 Mar - 24 Apr 2015 London The Fine Art Society was proud to stage the first West End survey of work by Unity Spencer, daughter of the celebrated twentieth century British artist, Sir Stanley Spencer . The exhibition also marked the publication of Unity's candid autobiography Lucky to be an Artist. The exhibition consisted of fifty... Read more

The John Scott Collection

Art Nouveau, Continental Art and Sculpture 25 Feb - 25 Mar 2015 London The John Scott Collection of Art Nouveau and Continental design, was presented alongside sculpture from the late 19th and early 20th centuries from The John Scott Collection. The exhibition included major works by both British and European pioneers of the period including Hector Guimard, Emile Gallé, Archibald Knox and Gustave... Read more

What Marcel Duchamp Taught Me

10 Oct - 5 Nov 2014 London Marking the centenary of Duchamp's readymade, The Fine Art Society was proud to present a major group exhibition What Marcel Duchamp Taught Me. It was the largest show in the history of the gallery at 148 New Bond Street, taking over the entire five floors of the townhouse as over... Read more

The John Scott Collection

Truth, Beauty, Power: The Designs of Dr. Christopher Dresser 11 Sep - 2 Oct 2014 London This exhibition presented the exceptional designs of Dr Christopher Dresser (1834-1904), widely regarded as Britain’s first independent industrial designer and one of the most influential figures in nineteenth-century design. Drawn from the John Scott Collection, the exhibition included a large number of rare and important pieces that had been exhibited... Read more

The Seven And Five Society 1920-1935

9 - 31 Jul 2014 London With exhibitions spanning from 1920, date of the formation of the society, to 1935, when their last exhibition was held at Zwemmer's Gallery, The Seven and Five Society included a total of eighty-seven artists in its fourteen exhibitions, which would go on to shape British Art for decades to come.... Read more

The John Scott Collection

Decorative Arts From the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 11 Jun - 3 Jul 2014 London The John Scott Collection of British decorative arts had been amassed for over forty years, becoming what many regarded to be the finest collection in private hands. The Fine Art Society was privileged to present this remarkable collection. All works were offered for sale through a series of seven definitive... Read more

A Family Collection From Boxted House

Robert Bevan and other Modern British art from the collection of Bobby and Natalie Bevan 18 Sep - 3 Oct 2013 London All of the works in this exhibition were all part of the collection at Boxted House in Essex, which was the home of Bobby and Natalie Bevan from 1946 until 2001. Bobby was the son of the Camden Town painter Robert Polhill Bevan (1865–1925), and inherited a significant group of... Read more

Arthur Melville

7 Sep - 18 Oct 2013 London Although Arthur Melville was a ‘tremendously vital’ Scot, it took an English, London-based art critic to remind us of Melville’s genius. Reviewing the Glasgow boys exhibition at the Royal Academy in 2010 in the Evening Standard, Brian Sewell wrote about the richness of Melville’s work which he found ‘quite astonishing’.... Read more

John McLean

Another Light: Prairie Journey 6 - 26 Sep 2013 London In 1981 I was thrilled to be asked as guest artist to the Emma Lake workshop in Saskatchewan. The place had become legendary. Artists preceding me included John Cage, Barnett Newman and Anthony Caro, whose Emma series was begun there. It was my first visit to Canada. I knew little... Read more

Whistler On The Thames

An Exhibition of Etchings and Lithotints 17 Apr - 9 May 2013 London The idea for this exhibition grew from the extraordinary etchings Whistler made in the late summer of 1859. The idea of the exhibition arose from him arriving in London, charged with Realist zeal inhaled in Paris, and taking lodgings in a rough, working class district of London. In Wapping he... Read more

British Murals and Decorative Paintings 1910-1970

14 Feb - 9 Mar 2013 London As a consequence of remaining out of the public domain murals often end up being written out of the accounts of the lives of the artists who created them - not withstanding the fact that for sheer size and scale it might be assumed that they were amongst the most... Read more

Carving in Britain

From 1910 To Now 3 Dec 2012 - 12 Jan 2013 London Although by no means an exhaustive survey of British carving of the last hundred years – exhibition space and availability of works dictated that - Carving in Britain was for many an introduction to a field that has attracted renewed interest in the last decade. It is possible to construct... Read more

George Clausen and the Picture of English Rural Life

10 Oct - 8 Nov 2012 London In 1979, to coincide with the Royal Academy’s Post- Impressionism exhibition and anticipate the large Sir George Clausen touring show, The Fine Art Society staged The Rustic Image, an exhibition surveying rural themes in British Painting. Of the eighty pictures by forty-two artists represented, nine were by Clausen. Not only... Read more

Sir Peter Blake

Things I Love at The Fine Art Society 20 Jul - 1 Sep 2012 London In 2012 The Fine Art Society proudly announced Things I Love At The Fine Art Society, an exhibition curated by Sir Peter Blake R.A. Opening the week before the Olympic and Paralympics games, the exhibition was a celebration of London and the artists who have lived and worked in the... Read more

Frank Dobson 1886-1963

20 Jun - 7 Jul 2012 London Frank Dobson was born in Acton Street, St Pancras, London on 18 November 1886. His father was a commercial artist, and young Frank was introduced to the technical aspects of painting at an early age. His father also fostered in him a love and respect for fine art by taking... Read more

Samuel Palmer

His Friends and Followers 30 May - 22 Jun 2012 London The landscape has a fundamental place in British art. During the earlier nineteenth century it inspired the greatest British artists to paint what they saw and experienced outside their studios in England and elsewhere: Turner, Constable, Bonington, David Roberts and John Linnell. Unlike such artists, Palmer approached landscape not in... Read more

John Piper 1903-1992

30 May - 22 Jun 2012 London John Piper (1903–1992) was an important and distinctive figure in modern British art in a long career that spanned seven decades, from the 1920s through to the 1980s. Throughout this time he was constantly evolving and changing and refining the nature of his style, and the trajectory he followed was... Read more

The Edwardians

The Golden Years Before The War 7 Dec 2011 - 7 Jan 2012 London The Edwardians featured work by artists working from the turn of the century and into the first years of the First World War. Highlights included 'In the Orchard', a watercolour of c.1908 by Dame Laura Knight, a clear expression of the 'joie de vivre' which the artist confessed on moving... Read more

Augustus Welby Pugin

Objects and Designs 7 Dec 2011 - 7 Jan 2012 London A.W.N. Pugin: Objects and Designs was a selling exhibition held in association with Haslam and Whiteway of Kensington Church Street, London, of furniture, objects and designs by architect and designer, A.W.N.Pugin. The exhibiton included a spectacular Corona from the Bishop's House, Birmingham (1840), a Candlestick bearing the arms of William... Read more

Gerald Leslie Brockhurst

Paintings, Prints and Drawings 6 Nov - 30 Dec 2011 London Gerald Leslie Brockhurst: Paintings, Prints and Drawings was held to mark twenty-five years since the first comprehensive exhibition of the work of Gerald Brockhurst, A Dream of Fair Women, which toured Sheffield, Birmingham and the National Portrait Gallery in London. As a painter, draughtsman and etcher, Brockhurst achieved an extraordinary... Read more

The Camden Town Group

Centenary Exhibition 15 Jun - 21 Jul 2011 London A centenary exhibition of The Camden Town Group which opened exactly 100 years to the day of the groups' original exhibition in Fitzroy Street in 1911. The show consisted of around seventy pictures by Walter Sickert, Robert Bevan, Malcolm Drummond, Harold Gilman, Charles Ginner, William Ratcliffe and many others. It... Read more

Lavery and The Glasgow Boys

7 Apr - 8 May 2010 Edinburgh, London No one quite understood why art should flourish in grimy Glasgow at the turn of the twentieth century. Even in eulogies on the ‘second city of the Empire’ there was a sense of wonder at how this could be – how a group of painters known as the Glasgow School... Read more