The Grosvenor Gallery, an English forerunner of the modern museum

Magazine Antiques, March, 1996 by Allison Eckerdt Ledes

The gallery was the brainchild of Sir Coutts Lindsay (1824-1913) and his wife Blanche, Lady Lindsay (1844-1912), who were both amateur artists. Their union brought together his title and inheritance and her considerable fortune and brilliant social acumen. The gallery was born out of discontent among artists who felt that the prestigious Royal Academy was too entrenched in the established artistic tastes and aesthetics of the later nineteenth century. The Lindsays were also keenly aware that women were underrepresented in exhibitions of contemporary art, as were watercolors (often the medium of choice for women). In addition, they believed that exhibition conditions in London were less than ideal.

Their gallery at 135-137 New Bond Street was at the heart of London's art and retailing district. Dubbed a "palace of art" from its inception, it had all the amenities of today's art museum. Designed by William Thomas Sams, it was built at a cost of between one hundred and one hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and occupied the width of two shop fronts, making it considerably larger than the neighboring commercial an galleries. The entrance doorway, from the Church of Santa Lucia in Venice, for which it was designed by Andrea Palladio, complements the Renaissance style of the facade of the gallery. The skylit west gallery measured 104 by 35 feet and was illuminated also in the evening, first by gas and later by electricity. The ceiling, which may have been decorated by James McNeill Whistler, had a celestial motif. There was a watercolor gallery and a small sculpture gallery, and statues also adorned the entrance hall staircase. In the basement was a restaurant - one of the first in any museum, and one of only a handful of good restaurants in London - and there were buffet bars, billiard rooms, and smoking rooms scattered about the basement and first floor. A circulating library (added in 1880) and later a gentlemen's club and a ladies' club were other amenities in the gallery. The interiors were elegant, and as Agnes D. Atkinson wrote in 1877, "Pottery and china, and groups of plants are disposed about the rooms, some to heighten the impression that this is not a public picture exhibition, but rather a patrician's private gallery shown by courtesy of its owner; indeed so studiously are the business arrangements kept out of sight, that but for the inevitable turnstiles and catalogue-keepers the illusion would be complete." Tours of exhibitions for the press and lavish dinners were organized to celebrate the openings of exhibitions. The Grosvenor Gallery attracted aristocrats as well as the newly rich industrialists and banking families, at a time when class distinctions between the titled and nouveau riche were blurring.

The primary focus of the gallery was the exhibition mounted each summer, when many aristocrats moved into the city from their country estates. The summer show, which was devoted to contemporary art, promoted both established artists and radical new trends. In its winter shows the gallery included the works of the old masters. Later in the gallery's history, exhibitions held in the autumn were devoted mainly to pastels. The first summer show of 1877 included the work of sixty-four artists, but by 1880 there were more than two hundred. At the outset the leading lights were Edward Burne-Jones and Whistler. Later, works by members of the second generation of Pre-Raphaelites were exhibited there. In addition to controversial artists the gallery showed works by more traditional artists such as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Frederic, Lord Leighton. By the late 1880s painters from the Continent who were investigating new painting styles - Jules Bastien Lepage, for example - were encouraged to submit canvases. At the end of the gallery's days, the Glasgow Boys were promoted.

The Grosvenor Gallery was innovative to the point of being revolutionary in other ways as well. The Lindsays advocated hanging the works of each artist together, thus providing a series of miniature retrospectives. They disdained the Victorian practice of skying paintings, preferring instead to give each work adequate wall space with not less than six, but preferably twelve inches between them. Making the gallery as inviting as they could, the Lindsays even went from studio to studio picking up the works they had selected to exhibit.

The Lindsays' marriage failed in 1882, and the gallery was beset with financial problems. Since Lady Lindsay promoted the exhibitions and encouraged her influential and affluent friends to patronize the artists who exhibited, her absence and the withdrawal of her half of the investment in the gallery signaled its demise. It closed its doors in 1890, but left a lasting legacy for both reforming the way exhibitions were organized and installed and inaugurating a new concept of the museum itself.

The catalogue of the exhibition, co-published by the Yale Center for British Art and Yale University Press, was edited by Susan P. Casteras and Colleen Denney and contains 199 pages, 24 color plates, and 90 illustrations. It may be obtained for $29.95 (soft cover) until April 28, and thereafter for $34.95, plus $4.25 for postage and handling, from the Yale Center for British Art, P.O. Box 208280, New Haven, Connecticut 06520-8280.