London’s Fine Art Society turns 140

While new art galleries seem to pop up (and down) at an alarming rate these days, the Fine Art Society stands proud as a gallery that opened in 1876 in the same New Bond Street, Mayfair townhouse where it operates today. Originally founded by collectors as a print and publishing business, the popular response to its fine art exhibitions pulled the gallery into a different direction, says Gordon Cooke, its director of 19th- and 20th-century prints. He cites an 1881 exhibition of works by Millais