As it begins its bicentennial year, the Royal Watercolour Society received a visit from The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh at the Bankside Gallery in London.
The Society was established two hundred years ago as a result of the prejudice against watercolour shown by the Royal Academy, the only professional artistic body of the day. At that time watercolour artists were excluded from its membership.
On 30 November 1804, William Frederick Wells and nine other artists gathered at the Stratford Coffee House in Oxford Street and formed a 'Society Associated for the Purpose of Establishing an Annual Exhibition of Paintings in Water Colors (sic)'. The first exhibition was held the following year, with nearly 12,000 people coming to see the art work on display.
The Society has always enjoyed royal support. King George IV lent works of art to an exhibition, while Queen Victoria and Prince Albert appeared regularly in the pages of the sale books. Queen Victoria gave her patronage to the Society in 1881, from whence it was known as the 'Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours'. In 1957 the Queen Mother opened the 200th exhibition of the Royal Society.
Towards the end of the 1970s, the Royal Society decided to take a lease in Southwark Council's new development at Bankside. The Queen opened the new Gallery in November 1980 which displayed an exhibition of watercolours by JMW Turner, loaned by the British Museum. Over 23 years after opening the Bankside Gallery, The Queen, with The Duke of Edinburgh, returned to see the latest exhibition mounted by the Royal Society in this, its bicentennial year.
The Queen was escorted by Mr. Trevor Frankland, the latest in a long line of Presidents of the Royal Watercolour Society. The exhibition is entitled, 'Then & Now: Our Watercolour Tradition'. It is the first of three special exhbitions celebrating the bicentenary of the Royal Watercolour Society and displays work from the Society's Diploma Collection.
The exhibition runs until Sunday 7 March 2004. |
