Society of Artists (Australia)

Society of Artists

Poster designed by Ruby Lindsay for the Society's 1907 exhibition.
Formation	1895 (1895)
Extinction	1965
Type	Artist collective
Headquarters	Sydney
Region served	Australia, but mainly in Sydney
1st Chairman	Tom Roberts

The Society of Artists was an influential Sydney based group of progressive artists who staged annual exhibitions from 1895 to the 1960s. The Society included many of Australia's best artists of the time. It lapsed during the mid 1960s.

In 1888 the artist Tom Roberts established the Victorian Artists' Society but he and Arthur Streeton moved to Sydney in 1891 during an economic depression in Melbourne. Roberts then formed the "Society of Artists" in Sydney in 1895 as a breakaway group from the Royal Art Society of NSW as a protest by avant-garde artists who believed that the general body of members should have a vote in choosing the committee of selection for annual shows,. As well the formation of the new Society was a protest against what they considered to be the cramping effect of the old unchanging tradition that photographic realism was the essential of good art and a desire to limit the membership to more professional painters.

The Society of Artists' foundation had strong points of similarity with that of the New English Art Club, which sought a more progressive and contemporary version of English art, and many of the Society's early executives were in some way influenced by Henry Tonks, Walter Sickert and their English fellows.

The Society of Artists' first exhibition, in 1895, was inaugurated by Sir Henry Parkes.

In 1897 the Society of Artists secured a Government subsidy of £400 a year which was later raised to £500. This enabled the painters to rent a gallery in Pitt Street, Sydney, and also to offer a travelling scholarship of £150 a year for three years to the best student of the year. Recipients of the Society's travelling scholarship included people like William Dobell, who later became famous artists.

Sydney Ure Smith was President of the Society from 1921 to 1948 and during this time he encouraged new members and advocated measured progress in Australian art. Together with George Washington Lambert he helped to keep the Society liberal and supported the award of the Society's travelling scholarship to young artists. In 1923 Lambert arranged the Society's controversial Exhibition of Australian Art in London – which attracted controversy because a group of Victorian artists wanted to remove Norman Lindsay's works as being "immoral" and applied for a court injunction to prevent the exhibition leaving Australia without further selections.