Royal+Glasgow+Institute

=[|Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts]=

Company Number: SC000912 Date of Incorporation: 21 August 1878 Contact Details: 2nd Floor, Oswald Street, Glasgow, G1 4QR, [|www.royalglasgowinsitute.org] Operating Details: Active, private company limited by guarantee, no share capital Other names (if known): Function of Company*: Other membership organisations (9133) Headquarters/Base of Operations Location: Glasgow Area of Operation: Glasgow


 * Taken from Standard Industrial Classification 2003, as used by Companies House in 2010

Records
Held By: Glasgow City Archives Special Collections GB 243

Scope/type: Cuttings Books various dates 1876-1978; Correspondence various dates 1969-1981; Minute books various 1861 -1971; Reports and Accounts 1895-1983; Roll of members 1870-1879,1873-1970; Sales books 1870-82,1921-31,1947-1976; Letter books International Exhibition 1888; Burns Exhibition 1896,Minute Book; Circular Books 1877-1903,1938-1953,1953-1970; Circular files 1967-1978; Accounts and Reports 1895 onwards various dates; Accounts journal 1879-1929; Admissions etc 1893-1904,1906-1912; RGI catalogues various dates 1889-1939; Exhibition catalogues various dates 1862-1982; Various sales books,cash books,receipts,press cuttings etc

Conditions governing access/use: The collections are available for reference from the Mitchell Library Level 2, archives and special collections department

Related records: The petition for Royal patronage is held in the National Archives of Scotland.

Company History
"By the middle of the 19th century Glasgow had become one of the most important cities of the British Empire, a centre of commerce, industry and population unequalled in Scotland and with few peers in the rest of the British Isles. The city had its complement of theatres, concert halls and libraries, a major art collection donated by Archibald McLellan and a number of art dealers but, surprisingly, no regular exhibition of the works of contemporary painters and sculptors. From the 1780s various organisations had attempted to fill this gap but none of them had either the financial backing or qualities of direction to maintain their initial impetus. It was with this in mind that on 29 May 1861, a group of ten or so of Glasgow’s prominent citizens met in the Queen’s Rooms, Buchanan Street, to discuss the establishment of annual exhibitions of the work of living artists. Roughly half of this group were artists, John Graham (later Sir John Graham-Gilbert), John Mossman and C N Woolworth being the best known, but a local businessman, Henry Simson, was elected Chairman at the meeting and was charged with arranging a public meeting and finding further financial support for the new Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.

"The public meeting endorsed the plans of the steering committee and Graham, along with Daniel MacNee RSA (who was co-opted to the committee) was given the task of arranging the first exhibition at the end of 1861. A budget of £500 was agreed and Glasgow Corporation agreed to the hire of the Corporation Galleries (now the McLellan Galleries) in Sauchiehall Street. One hundred and eleven paintings were sold but so many works were submitted that the costs increased to over £1,000 and a profit of only £55.2.3d was achieved. It was however, both an artistic and an enormous popular success attracting 39,099 visitors, with the Minute Book recording that a large proportion of these were purchasers of “Working Men’s Tickets”. Despite the disappointing financial results the Committee were encouraged by the reception the exhibition had received both from the artistic community and the general public. Accordingly, a formal Council and Constitution were voted in and plans were made for a second exhibition.

"The shows, which followed, proved the financial viability of the new Institute and the quality of work submitted for exhibition vindicated the original decision to embark upon such an ambitious project. This early success, in some ways unexpected, brought with it a number of problems. The growing numbers of exhibits and artists placed a greater strain on the only suitable premises, the Corporation Galleries, and the Corporation of the City of Glasgow began to express its misgivings about the Institute’s repeated demands for accommodation. In particular, the Corporation was most unhappy about renting its Galleries to the Institute for four or five months of the year - which involved packing and putting into store the McLellan Collection of Old Masters. The relationship between Institute and Corporation was, at best, uneasy but the popularity of the exhibition with both the “art-buying” and the “art-loving” public ensured its continuing annual appearance at the Corporation Galleries until 1879 when the Institute opened its own Gallery in Sauchiehall Street (a building better known to more recent generations of Glaswegians as Pettigrew and Stephens’ department store). The institute became a registered company during the planning of this opening.

"As the exhibitions grew in size, so did they in quality. John Graham lent pictures by Turner and Constable, and the practice grew in the 1870s to include many works by French painters which had recently entered Scottish collections. Agents were recruited in London to seek out pictures for the Institute and by 1880 some of the most famous English artists were regular exhibitors in Glasgow, Albert Moore, Millais, Holman Hunt, Poynter, Leighton, Watts and Burne Jones joined London Scots, such a Pettrie and Orchardson, MacWhirter and Farquharson as contributors of major paintings to the annual exhibitions at the Institute. French and Dutch paintings became regular features too, either borrowed from collectors such as James Donald and Sir Peter Coats or contributed for sale by the artists’ dealers in London and Glasgow. Many a Millet or Corot, Israels or Maris found a permanent home in Glasgow after its appearance on the walls of the Institute.

"Not surprisingly the popular success of these exhibitions increased the Institute’s profits - 45,327 people visited the second exhibition, 53,000 visitors were received at the third and the figures rose steadily for twenty years. Both the quality and quantity of works on show grew and the strain on the accommodation offered by the Corporation spurred the Institute to build a Gallery of its own. For some years the Institute had been putting part of its profits into the purchase of works from the exhibition and by the sale of these, and some judicious borrowings, sufficient funds were raised for the new project. J J Burnet was chosen as architect, a site was acquired in Sauchiehall Street between West Campbell Street and Wellington Street, and the new Galleries opened with the annual exhibition of 1879.

"The opening of these new Galleries marked a change in the role and finances of the Institute. By 1880 it had become an established venue on the round of the grand formal exhibitions which were open to all artists throughout Britain. The Institute joined the Royal Academy, The Royal Scottish Academy, The West of England Academy, The Hibernian Academy, The Manchester Institute and the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition in the circle - some might say circus - of exhibitions where the latest fashions and the latest productions of the great names were revealed every year. In 1896, in recognition of the Institute’s considerable achievements, Queen Victoria conferred upon it a Royal Charter and the Institute, as we know it today was formally constituted.

"Until the outbreak of war in 1914, the Institute maintained its artistic and social success with annual displays of the latest in British painting which were unrivalled in Scotland. Although the most avant-garde of painters from the South did not show at the Institute, or any of the other major venues, the established figures of the day all sent their latest works to Glasgow. Sargent and Whistler, Waterhouse and Millais, Renoir and Khnopff, could be seen alongside Henry and Hornel, Gauld and Park, Lavery and Guthrie, together with the younger generation of Scottish painters and sculptors, spurred on by the example and success of the more senior men.

"The benefits brought to the Institute by having its own Galleries, however, were soon offset by increased running costs. From being the organiser of a single annual exhibition, the Institute was suddenly presented with the problem of maintaining interest in its own Galleries throughout the year. Much of the Institute’s capital had gone into the new building, and its assets were few, having sold its collection of paintings to help finance the Galleries. So, in 1902, after the opening of the new Corporation Art Gallery at Kelvingrove and the removal of the collections there, the Institute decided to sell its own premises and revert to its original hire of the McLellan Galleries which were now more easily available. Its debts were cleared but Glasgow lost one of its most attractive Gallery spaces, which was purchased by Pettigrew and Stephens, as an extension to its existing premises. Badly damaged by fire, it was eventually demolished in the early 1970s.

"The outbreak of war in 1914 was not allowed to disrupt the Institute’s exhibition programme, and it continued to attract many of the artists from the south who had, in the previous decade, become its chief asset. Among these, of course, could now be numbered two of the Glasgow Boys who had settled in London before the war and were now pillars of the English artistic establishment - Sir John Lavery RA and George Henry RA. By this date they represented the old guard, along with others of the Boys who continued to exhibit - Gauld, Park, Guthrie, Walton and Hornel - but some younger painters, more in touch with the latest developments at home and abroad, also made regular appearances. The most prominent of these were three men approaching middle age - S J Peploe, Leslie Hunter and F C B Cadell - who made a direct link with pre-war Paris and the paintings of Matisse and Picasso.

"Between the wars the Institute began to suffer from a change in artistic trends. Few bodies of its size continued to attract the younger generation of experimental painters and sculptors. After 1939, when J D Fergusson settled in Glasgow and helped to set up the New Art Club, other small groups were formed to provide a more progressive alternative to the Institute. By refusing to send to the Institute or Academies, young painters compounded this state of affairs, leaving the field open to the more traditional painters who took advantage of the situation and made the most of the excellent opportunities which the Institute provided. The control of these large artistic bodies was now more firmly than ever in the hands of the older painters, two major wars having the effect of decimating whole generations of talented men and women. This was exacerbated by the election process to the council, ensuring that more traditionalists took the few available seats, and that a more conservative outlook prevailed.

"During the 1950s and in the decades since, there has been a concentrated effort to rekindle the excitement that the Institute generated in the first fifty years of its existence and the fruits of that policy are now becoming apparent. The generous gift of the J D Kelly Gallery gave the Council an opportunity to encourage individual painters through small exhibitions in the city at a time when such spaces were rare and oversubscribed. The Institute remains, by far, the largest and the best attended exhibition of contemporary art. It has provided space on its walls for many shades of artistic opinion and no longer operates the aesthetic censorship that was prevalent in the 1920 and 1930s. It may be a truism, but the quality and liveliness of its exhibitions is almost entirely dependent upon the quality of work submitted.

"The Institute is aware of the problems which troubled it and similar bodies throughout the country and has come to grips with them. It faces its new role with enthusiasm and commitment, from a sound financial base, ready to play its own part in the current regeneration of the visual arts in the city to the heights they achieved a century ago. Its success cannot be doubted and it will be judged, and hopefully applauded, by Members and exhibitors for many years to come."

Roger Billcliffe from []