The Fine Art Society was established by a group of like-minded and passionate collectors in 1876. The company was then, as now, at once traditional and progressive in outlook, enjoying a prominent position as a print seller, dealer, contemporary exhibition organiser, and publisher; producing many fine art books as well as extensive exhibition catalogues for over 140 years. Major living artists who exhibited at the gallery include Sir John Everett Millais, John Singer Sargent, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Frank Brangwyn, Alfred Gilbert and the New Sculpture artists, Gluck, Joseph Southall and Algernon Newton amongst many others.
The gallery has been influential in the promotion of contemporary artists since the 1870s, and can be virtually credited with the invention of the monographic exhibition. Famous examples include James McNeill Whistler’s An Arrangement in White and Yellow in 1883, and Alfred East's Pictures and Drawings of the Landscape of Japan in 1890. Both artists, particularly Alfred East, would cement the gallery’s key role with promoting Japanese influence in the West, culminating in the first large scale one-person show of the work of Hokusai anywhere in Europe.
By the turn of the twentieth century The Fine Art Society had firmly established its role in promoting and exhibiting many artists allied with the rising British Impressionist and Modern movements. Whistler was key to introducing impressionist artists such as William Stott of Oldham and Walter Sickert, who described the gallery as ‘the best shop in London’. Both artists were key to the development en plein air painting in Britain and laid the foundation for future exhibitions at the gallery with more maverick modernists on the international scene such as Leon Bakst and Tsuguharu Foujita, alongside a special brand of British realists including William Strang, Dame Laura Knight, Gluck and Ernest and Dod Procter.
