Clifton Arts Club

The Clifton Arts Club has a distinguished early history. It was founded in 1906 by four artists, all of whom academicians of what later become the Royal West of England Academy, and a first most of its artist members were professionals. The Club’s first president, Jacques Emile Blanche, had been a pupil of Manet. The Club’s exhibitions between 1909 and 1925 in the RWA included loan pictures by Monet, Whistler, Derain, Matisse and Vlaminck, as well as picture loaned by Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, Stanley Spencer, John and Paul Nash, Wyndham Lewis and Winifred Nicholson.

From the beginning, the Club had a very “modern” outlook – more modern than other art institutions in Bristol at the time. The loaned post impressionist pictures, as well as some of those painted by club members, were not all understood by the inhabitants of Bristol, and were much derided.

From 1910 until 1923, the Club headquarters were two rooms in the basement of the RWA, and from 1924 until 1940 they had rooms in Charlotte Street. The Club then moved to various locations in Clifton, and since 1976 has met in the United Reform Church Hall in Redland Park.

The Club had also been involved with other arts, with music, poetry, drama and crafts, and between the wars these somewhat overshadowed painting among the Club’s activities. The club become widely known for its drama, winning national competitions, and broadcasting on the BBC as the “Clifton Arts Club Hour”. The club in Charlotte Street was called by the press the “Latin Quarter” of Bristol.

During the Second World War, the Charlotte Street premises were destroyed in a blitz, and the Club membership and activities were much reduced, with the drama and craft sides stopping altogether. After the war, the club slowly expanded again, with most of the members now being amateur and professional artists. Musical and literacy activities gradually ceased as other Bristol clubs took over these roles.

An exhibition of painting and sculpture has been held every year from 1906 to the present day (except 1912-13 and 1961), at first in the RWA until 1922, then in Charlotte Street until 1960, and in the RWA again until 1986, when it moved to its present venue at the Bristol School of Art.