New English Art Club

The New English Art Club was an exhibiting society of artists founded in London in 1886 by painters influenced by French Impressionism whose work was rejected by the conservative Royal Academy. The club arose as an alternative to the academic system and sought to provide an independent platform for a younger generation of painters, many of whom had trained in Paris and adopted the plein-air methods and bright palette of the French masters. Among its founders and early members were John Singer Sargent, Philip Wilson Steer, George Clausen, Stanhope Forbes and, later, Walter Sickert, who played a leading role in the society's affairs. In the late 1880s Sickert and Steer formed an 'impressionist nucleus' within the club, staging their own exhibition, London Impressionists, in 1889. The New English Art Club became an important centre of progressive British art at the turn of the century and helped to disseminate Impressionist and realist tendencies in Britain. The society continues to exist today, preserving the tradition of figurative painting from life.