Providence Art Club

The Providence Art Club is an art club founded in 1880, and located on Thomas Street in Providence, Rhode Island. The club has studios, galleries and a clubhouse in a "picturesque procession of historic houses," which are across the street from the First Baptist Church in America. One of those buildings is the Fleur-de-lys Studios.

The Providence Art Club was founded on February 19, 1880. It is the third oldest continually operating art club in America, after the Philadelphia Sketch Club and New York's Salmagundi Club. It was the first art club in the United States to admit women as members.

It was founded by several Providence artists including Edward Mitchell Bannister, Charles Walter Stetson, Sydney Burleigh, George William Whitaker, and Rosa Peckham. Six of its first sixteen members were women.

The first president of the Art Club was the locally prominent portrait artist James Sullivan Lincoln. The club's first woman president was Mabel May Woodward.

Not much is known about founding member Rosa Peckham; she studied with William Rimmer in New York and Jules Joseph Lefebvre in Paris. She was among the first 30 American women to have her artwork exhibited at the Paris Salon. She served as vice president of the Art Club in 1883 after turning down the position of president.

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