Bankside Gallery

Bankside Gallery on Hopton Street in London is the home of the Royal Watercolour Society, an exclusive artist organization founded in 1804 that was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1980. Before moving to Bankside, the society originated at Oxford Street's Stratford Coffee House. Today, membership is restricted to just 75 fully elected artists. The gallery's inaugural 1980 exhibition showcased J.M.W. Turner watercolours.

London Β· from the walk β€œThe Artist's Thames” Β· audio ~4 min Β· Generated

Bankside Gallery, 48 Hopton Street, London SE1 9JH

When was Bankside Gallery in London officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II?

Bankside Gallery is the home of the Royal Watercolour Society, and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. It sits here on Hopton Street, tucked between the thundering foot traffic of the Tate and the pubs along the Thames Path... and most people walk right past it. Which is ironic, because this modest space carries a lineage that the Tate Modern, for all its grandeur, cannot match.......... On the twentieth of November, eighteen oh four, a man named William Frederick Wells initiated the founding of the Society of Painters in Watercolours at a meeting held at the Stratford Coffee House on Oxford Street. Think about that. A coffee house. The whole thing was born out of grievance β€” watercolourists who felt discriminated against by the Royal Academy, where their work commanded insufficient respect. Watercolour was considered "drawing" rather than "painting," and therefore lower status. Landscape, its most frequent subject, sat near the bottom of the genre hierarchy.......... Now here's a detail that should fascinate any artist. Wells was a close friend of J.M.W. Turner, yet Turner never exhibited with the Society, preferring to show watercolours alongside oils in his own gallery, also opened in eighteen oh four. The founder's best friend... refused to join!......... And one of the Society's original members, John Varley, led one of the strangest chapters in British art history. A student of astrology who believed in spirits but was frustrated by his inability to see them, Varley was drawn to William Blake, who claimed visions since childhood. The two would gather late at night in Varley's house, playing a game where Varley would summon a spirit and Blake would sketch its likeness. According to Varley, the imagery of a flea came to Blake during an eighteen nineteen sΓ©ance. That became The Ghost of a Flea... a tiny, haunting masterpiece you can see at the Tate just next door.......... But back to this building. As the twentieth century wore on, property prices in the West End rose. In nineteen seventy-three, the societies' Conduit Street lease was renewed but the rent became unsustainable. They were homeless. Then, as chance would have it, a fortuitous dinner invitation β€” between the Society's president Ernest Greenwood and property developer Sir Gerald Glover β€” led to the foundation of Bankside Gallery.......... Queen Elizabeth the Second graciously opened Bankside Gallery on the eleventh of November, nineteen eighty, when the societies moved from the West End into their new home on the Thames Path. And the Very First exhibition? Turner's drawings and watercolours of British river scenes, borrowed from the British Museum! The man whose friend started it all... his work christened this space.......... Bankside Gallery was at the forefront of creating this cultural quarter β€” joined first by the Globe Theatre in nineteen ninety-seven and then by Tate Modern in two thousand. Only seventy-five members can be fully elected at any one time, and associate members can only move to full status through the death, retirement, or resignation of an existing member. It is, in its way, one of the most exclusive artist societies on earth.......... So step inside. It's free. And take a moment to look at what watercolour can truly do... in the hands of artists who have been fighting for this medium for over two hundred years.

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