The Grosvenor Gallery: a palace of art in Victorian England

Abstract

London's notorious Grosvenor Gallery was founded by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife, Lady Blanche Lindsay, to serve as an alternative to the Royal Academy. Although it existed only from 1877 to 1890, the gallery displayed the works and advanced the careers of many progressive artists, particularly those whose work was ignored by the traditional tastes of the usual exhibition venues. The Lindsays' innovative approach to art, audiences, and exhibition display made the gallery an influential force not only in Victorian art and society but also in the evolution of modern-day museum practice. This first in-depth study of the Grosvenor Gallery consists of essays by noted scholars in nineteenth-century art and culture who explore critical aspects of the gallery such as the significance of its social ambience, the diverse content of its winter and summer exhibitions, and its status in the context of other exhibition sites. The authors also consider artists and groups who exhibited at the gallery, including Edward Burne-Jones and the second generation Pre-Raphaelites, James McNeill Whistler, George Frederic Watts, Evelyn Pickering De Morgan and other women artists, the Newlyn School, British Rustic Naturalists, and the Glasgow Boys. Copublished with the Yale Center for British Art