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Buonarotti Club
The Buonarotti Club was a bohemian artists' society in Melbourne, Australia between 1883 and 1887, associated with Heidelberg School of painters.
The Buonarotti Club was established in May 1883 by Cyrus Mason (c. 1829 – 18 August 1915) and his colleague Edward Gilks, senior engravers. Professional painters joining them in the inaugural meeting in May 1883 included Fred M. Williams, Tom Humphrey, (later Sir) John Longstaff and Alexander Colquhoun, and also younger artists, the art teachers, John L. Himen, Theodore Dewey and Izett Watson. Mason was secretary of the charitable Victorian Art Unions 1872–75, engraver, draughtsman and artist who was publishing views and maps in coloured lithographs from mid-century. Through his membership of Melbourne's Yorick Club, Mason was active in colonial literary, artistic and bohemian circles, and in the 1860s, was an illustrator for his friend Marcus Clarke, editor of the Colonial Monthly. He proposed the name 'Buonarotti' in honour of Italian sculptor, painter, draughtsman and architect Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564), in accord with a widespread revival of interest in Michelangelo then in Europe and Britain, the spelling "Buonarotti" being then generally accepted. The Renaissance hero excelled in a number of artistic media and was thus an appropriate figurehead for a club with multidisciplinary membership, with one, Brian Gilks, regarding him as their 'patron saint'.
They met at the Prince's Bridge Hotel, now known as Young and Jackson's, on the corner of Swanston and Flinders streets. One of its owners was the art collector Henry Figsby Young (1845–1925), who decorated the hotel with nineteenth-century European and Australian paintings and displayed a selection of 'South Sea island weaponry' on the walls, making it an exciting and stimulating venue for aspiring bohemian artists and associates. After the club's early meetings at Young and Jackson's, the group continued at the Earl of Zetland also in Swanston Street, Sheehan's New Treasury Club Hotel on Spring Street, the Duke of Rothsay in Elizabeth Street and the newly established Melbourne Coffee Palace, Bourke Street.
While other art societies were established around this time, including the Victorian Academy of Arts (1870–1888), the Australian Artists Society (formed in 1886) and the Victorian Artists Society (1888), their purpose was the study and exhibition of art, while the Buonarotti Club was a unique entity. Club members joined one of three 'sections';'Artistic', 'Literary' and 'Musical', though most of its men and women were professional painters, including Frederick McCubbin, Louis Abrahams, Tom Roberts and Jane Sutherland.
It differed from the several other literary clubs and societies of Melbourne's 1880s, the Shakespeare Society, the Shelley Society, the Burns Society and the Lamb Society, in that it was artist-dominated, with members with professional goals, rather than amateurs, though it included emerging painters who came for critique and instruction from their peers, and opportunities to exhibit and to be received by Melbourne art world. Music and literature provided further topics for discussion.
The character and reputation of its founding members established the club as being devoted to artistic development; experienced professionals providing guidance to the aspiring artist-teachers. A 1936 Adelaide News article notes that L. T. Luxton's Memories of Noted Artists "conveys the startling information that Sir John Longstaff in those days (the 'eighties) was a most brilliant performer on the piano and used to entertain the [Buonarotti] members regularly with recitals of a high classic order. This is news, for few of us were aware that he was a practitioner."
The Luxton article further adds David Davies and E. Phillips Fox to its list of members.
The Club enjoyed the patronage of a sophisticated following of art lovers and collectors through a quarterly conversazione (called sometimes 'The Ladies' Nights'), which took place in the prestigious Melbourne Coffee Palace. The programmes issued show that musical members sang or played (Mason himself was earlier the publisher of an original score The Song of the Bush) while the Artistic Section exhibited new work. Guests partook of supper at one shilling per head and mingled with the members, who were identified by a maroon ribbon on their lapel and showed guests 'large numbers of paintings in oils and watercolours, portfolios of sketches and specimens of wood engraving'. These evenings followed on a smaller scale the lead of London's Grosvenor Gallery which in the 1870s had attracted art audiences to Grand Opening banquets, 'invitationals', Sunday openings, private views, at-homes and soirées.
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Buonarotti Club
The Buonarotti Club was a bohemian artists' society in Melbourne, Australia between 1883 and 1887, associated with Heidelberg School of painters.
The Buonarotti Club was established in May 1883 by Cyrus Mason (c. 1829 – 18 August 1915) and his colleague Edward Gilks, senior engravers. Professional painters joining them in the inaugural meeting in May 1883 included Fred M. Williams, Tom Humphrey, (later Sir) John Longstaff and Alexander Colquhoun, and also younger artists, the art teachers, John L. Himen, Theodore Dewey and Izett Watson. Mason was secretary of the charitable Victorian Art Unions 1872–75, engraver, draughtsman and artist who was publishing views and maps in coloured lithographs from mid-century. Through his membership of Melbourne's Yorick Club, Mason was active in colonial literary, artistic and bohemian circles, and in the 1860s, was an illustrator for his friend Marcus Clarke, editor of the Colonial Monthly. He proposed the name 'Buonarotti' in honour of Italian sculptor, painter, draughtsman and architect Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564), in accord with a widespread revival of interest in Michelangelo then in Europe and Britain, the spelling "Buonarotti" being then generally accepted. The Renaissance hero excelled in a number of artistic media and was thus an appropriate figurehead for a club with multidisciplinary membership, with one, Brian Gilks, regarding him as their 'patron saint'.
They met at the Prince's Bridge Hotel, now known as Young and Jackson's, on the corner of Swanston and Flinders streets. One of its owners was the art collector Henry Figsby Young (1845–1925), who decorated the hotel with nineteenth-century European and Australian paintings and displayed a selection of 'South Sea island weaponry' on the walls, making it an exciting and stimulating venue for aspiring bohemian artists and associates. After the club's early meetings at Young and Jackson's, the group continued at the Earl of Zetland also in Swanston Street, Sheehan's New Treasury Club Hotel on Spring Street, the Duke of Rothsay in Elizabeth Street and the newly established Melbourne Coffee Palace, Bourke Street.
While other art societies were established around this time, including the Victorian Academy of Arts (1870–1888), the Australian Artists Society (formed in 1886) and the Victorian Artists Society (1888), their purpose was the study and exhibition of art, while the Buonarotti Club was a unique entity. Club members joined one of three 'sections';'Artistic', 'Literary' and 'Musical', though most of its men and women were professional painters, including Frederick McCubbin, Louis Abrahams, Tom Roberts and Jane Sutherland.
It differed from the several other literary clubs and societies of Melbourne's 1880s, the Shakespeare Society, the Shelley Society, the Burns Society and the Lamb Society, in that it was artist-dominated, with members with professional goals, rather than amateurs, though it included emerging painters who came for critique and instruction from their peers, and opportunities to exhibit and to be received by Melbourne art world. Music and literature provided further topics for discussion.
The character and reputation of its founding members established the club as being devoted to artistic development; experienced professionals providing guidance to the aspiring artist-teachers. A 1936 Adelaide News article notes that L. T. Luxton's Memories of Noted Artists "conveys the startling information that Sir John Longstaff in those days (the 'eighties) was a most brilliant performer on the piano and used to entertain the [Buonarotti] members regularly with recitals of a high classic order. This is news, for few of us were aware that he was a practitioner."
The Luxton article further adds David Davies and E. Phillips Fox to its list of members.
The Club enjoyed the patronage of a sophisticated following of art lovers and collectors through a quarterly conversazione (called sometimes 'The Ladies' Nights'), which took place in the prestigious Melbourne Coffee Palace. The programmes issued show that musical members sang or played (Mason himself was earlier the publisher of an original score The Song of the Bush) while the Artistic Section exhibited new work. Guests partook of supper at one shilling per head and mingled with the members, who were identified by a maroon ribbon on their lapel and showed guests 'large numbers of paintings in oils and watercolours, portfolios of sketches and specimens of wood engraving'. These evenings followed on a smaller scale the lead of London's Grosvenor Gallery which in the 1870s had attracted art audiences to Grand Opening banquets, 'invitationals', Sunday openings, private views, at-homes and soirées.