Boston Art Club

The Boston Art Club, Boston, Massachusetts, serves as a nexus for Members and non Members to access the world of Fine Art. Currently more than 250 members maintain an active environment for the support and promotion of these works.

The Boston Art Club was first conceived in Boston in 1854 with the consolidation of efforts between local artists, including Benjamin Champney, Alfred Ordway, Samuel Lancaster Gerry and Walter Brackett. Their desire was to form a democratic organization where the European tradition of independent, master-artists would be replaced with cooperation in the promotion, sale and education of art.

They held their first official meeting on New Year's Day, 1855, when they named themselves the Boston Art Club. They elected three presidents: Joseph Alexander Ames, Walter Brackett, and Benjamin Champney. It is not known why they chose three Presidents that first year. The only other two officers elected were a Treasurer and a Recording Secretary. It is said that there were twenty founding Members that also included Francis Seth Frost, Samuel W. Griggs, Edward Pressey, Frederick Dickinson Williams, and Moses Wright. The Members were a combination of Academically trained Artists who had studied in Europe, and Artists who picked up their trade studying with local Boston Artists teaching in the old European tradition of Master/Student. The Boston Art Club founding Members painted in the local New England area.

One of the first orders of business for the newly formed Club was to mount an exhibition. Alfred Ordway, a Club founder, had a relationship with the Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest libraries in America, and the Boston Art Club was able to secure an exhibition there in 1855. Ordway became the director of paintings at the Boston Athenaeum from 1856-1863. The first Boston Art Club exhibition was in combination with several New York colleagues, including Frederic Church, Asher Durand, and John Kensett.

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