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| Arundel Society | |
|---|---|
| Name | Arundel Society |
| Founded | 1849 |
| Dissolved | 1897 |
| Type | Society for promoting knowledge of Italian art |
| Headquarters | London |
| Notable people | Prince Augustus Frederick, Earl of Arundel; Charles Eastlake; Walter Armstrong; Giovanni Morelli; John Ruskin |
Arundel Society The Arundel Society was a London-based association founded in 1849 to promote knowledge of Italian painting through accurate reproductions and scholarly study. It operated in the Victorian era alongside institutions such as the Royal Academy of Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum, British Museum, and National Gallery, London, engaging figures connected to Royal Society, Society of Antiquaries of London, Royal Society of Literature, and continental collections like the Uffizi Gallery, Accademia Carrara, Galleria degli Uffizi, and Pinacoteca di Brera.
The society emerged amid mid-19th-century interest exemplified by the Great Exhibition and movements associated with John Ruskin, William Morris, G. F. Watts, and Charles Robert Leslie. Early patrons included members of aristocratic families such as the Howard family (Dukes of Norfolk), the Earl of Arundel, and collectors linked to institutions like the Ashmolean Museum, Woburn Abbey, Holkham Hall, and the National Portrait Gallery. Influences on the society’s foundation included publications and circles around Giovanni Morelli, A. W. Franks, and Johann Joachim Winckelmann scholarship, while contacts extended to curators at the Louvre, Museo nazionale del Bargello, Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, and the Accademia di San Luca.
The society’s mission paralleled the aims of Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and the Society of Painters in Water Colours by promoting fidelity to originals and dissemination of images to collectors and scholars across networks including the British Museum, British Library, Cambridge University Library, Bodleian Library, and the National Art Library. Activities involved commissioning engravings and chromolithographs after works by masters associated with Sandro Botticelli, Giovanni Bellini, Piero della Francesca, Fra Angelico, Masaccio, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Raphael Sanzio da Urbino, Titian, Correggio, Andrea Mantegna, Luca Signorelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, and Carlo Crivelli. Collaboration networks included printmakers and scholars linked to Charles Eastlake, Walter Armstrong, Frederic Leighton, Gustave Doré, and Eugène Delacroix.
The society produced a serial of high-quality reproductions and monographs published for subscribers and institutions such as the Royal Collection, Windsor Castle, Kensington Palace, Chatsworth House, and private collections belonging to Lord Elgin, Lord Northbrook, and Sir John Soane. Reproductions were engraved and chromolithographed by printmakers working in the traditions of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Francesco Bartolozzi, Thomas Goff Lupton, Joseph Swain, and publishers associated with Bradbury & Evans and Cassell, Petter & Galpin. The series documented fresco cycles found in sites like Scrovegni Chapel, Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi, Sistine Chapel, Palazzo Vecchio, Basilica di Santa Maria Novella, and the Cathedral of Parma.
Leadership and contributors included curators, critics, and collectors connected to Charles Lock Eastlake, John Ruskin, Giovanni Morelli, Walter Armstrong, Frederic Leighton, 1st Baron Leighton, A. W. Franks, Sir Charles Newton, Henry Cole, John Sheepshanks, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown, Thomas Woolner, Philip Gilbert Hamerton, James Duffield Harding, Samuel Rogers, William Dyce, Alexander Munro, George Richmond, Thomas Uwins, Charles Eastlake (painter).
The society organized displays and distributed plates to exhibitions and salons connected with the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, International Exhibition of 1862, Paris 1855, Paris 1867, and provincial galleries such as the Manchester Art Gallery, Leeds Art Gallery, Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, and Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Its influence extended to curators and scholars working at the Vatican Museums, Galleria Borghese, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Museo Correr, and academic centers including University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Courtauld Institute of Art, École des Beaux-Arts, and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum.
The society left a legacy informing connoisseurship and comparative methods associated with Giovanni Morelli and later practices in the Warburg Institute, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich, and collections stewardship at the National Gallery of Victoria, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Prado Museum. Its plates were used by scholars working on attribution schemas developed by Bernard Berenson, Johannes Wilde, Rudolf Wittkower, Erwin Panofsky, Lionello Venturi, Lionel Cust, and later historians at the Courtauld Institute and Warburg Library. The Arundel Society’s work impacted museum publishing traditions adopted by Taylor & Francis, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, and influenced cataloguing practices employed by the International Council of Museums and conservation approaches at institutions such as the Tate Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland.
Category:Organizations established in 1849 Category:Art history