The Chelsea Arts Club was founded in 1890 by a group of artists living and working in the area. For the first ten years of its existence the Club occupied premises in a studio at 181 King’s Road. In 1901 the Members purchased a house just round the corner, at 143-5 Old Church Street; the Club has been there ever since.
Chelsea was the artistic centre of London in the later 19th century: so much so that the area where the Kingʼs Road met Church Street became known as The Latin Quarter.
In the early autumn of 1890 a group of artists began to meet in sculptor Stirling Lee’s studio in Manresa Road to discuss forming an exhibiting society, but talk soon turned to founding a Club.
The discussions became formal enough to be minuted, minutes which the Club still possesses. The first formal meeting on 30th September elected a Committee to examine how an exhibition could be held; the members included Stirling Lee himself and painters Percy Jacomb-Hood and Jimmy Christie.
A month later, on 25th October, Stirling Lee reported on the work of his committee and proposed that their plan for an exhibition be adopted. Arthur Ransome, in his history Bohemia in London, tells the story of what happened next:
The report was duly read, when someone [it was Theodore Wores, a friend of Whistler’s from San Francisco] got up and said that surely there was something that Chelsea needed more than an exhibition, and that was a Club. ‘Club, club, club!’ shouted everybody, and the exhibition was completely forgotten at once and has never been held to this day.
Backing his friend up, James Whistler proposed – and Jimmy Christie seconded – that a new Committee should be formed to ‘draw up a scheme for the conduct of a Club.’ There were clearly no hard feelings, because Lee and Jacomb-Hood – along with Christie – were appointed to this new Committee, where Whistler joined them too.
On 15th November 1890 it was agreed that the Club:
▪ Should be called Chelsea Arts Club
▪ Should consist of professional architects, engravers, painters and sculptors
▪ Should aim to advance the cause of art by means of exhibitions, life classes and other kindred means and to promote social intercourse amongst its members.
James Christie offered the use of the ground floor and basement of his house at 181 King’s Road and the formal launch of the new Clubhouse took place on 18th March 1891, with 55 Members present.
The Chelsea Arts Balls have been famous for over 100 years. These wild fancy dress celebrations are artists’ parties par excellence – explosive creative carnivals where anything goes and inhibitions are left at the door.
The roots of the Chelsea Arts Balls can be traced back to the fancy dress parties which artists use to hold in their studios in the 1880s. Following the foundation of the Club in 1891 these parties grew in scope and ambition, and by the early 1900s were being held in the so called Vestry Hall in the King’s Road.
The Vestry Hall was soon to be demolished however (it reopened as what is now called the Old Town Hall in 1908) and the Club began the search for a new venue. The hope was to organise an artists’ ball that could rival the great Parisian ‘Bal des Quat’z’Arts’, which had been inaugurated in 1892.
In 1908 and 1909 the Club held balls at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden – with such success that in 1910 the Royal Albert Hall was hired for a Mardi Gras Ball. This too was a triumph, and the Hall was to be the home of the Chelsea Arts Ball for the best part of the next 50 years.
“The mere mention of the Chelsea Arts Ball would make the debutante blush and the dowager blench.”Lady Muriel Beckwith, 1936
Held either on Mardi Gras or New Year’s Eve, the Balls were soon the most famous fancy dress parties in the world and a centrepiece of London’s social season. They were extravagant affairs, with over 100 performers, lavish decorations and up to 4,000 dancers on the ‘Great Floor’ of the Albert Hall. Dressed to match exotic themes like ‘Noah’s Ark’, ‘Sun Worship’, or ‘The Naked Truth’, revellers would dance into the early hours, until a breakfast was eventually served at 5 am as an end to the festivities.
The United Arts Force (later the United Arts Volunteer Rifles) was a Home Front Defence battalion formed from artists in August and September 1914. In the early weeks of the war, whilst they waited for their uniforms and rifles to arrive, the members of the Force paraded in white jerseys, carrying broomsticks and snooker cues instead of weapons. A white jumper of the time was advertised as ‘The Unshrinkable’ and the whole artists’ corps swiftly acquired the nickname ‘The Unshrinkables.’
In 2014, to mark the centenary of the First World War, the Club reformed its platoon of Unshrinkables. The new force paraded in November in each of the anniversary years of the War, in the quadrangle of the Royal Academy. Since 2019 Parades have marked the birthday of Sir Henry Cole, and they are now held outside the Royal Albert Hall on or about 15th July annually.
Never shall I forget how suddenly Chelsea seemed to become an armed camp. Soldiers were bivouacked in Ranelagh Gardens and the Royal Hospital Grounds …… It was a heart-breaking sight to see the young men of all ranks going up the steps of the Chelsea Town Hall to enlist.
Dora Meeson
The Australian artist Dora Meeson was the wife of Chelsea Arts Club Member George Coates, who in 1914 lived in a studio in Glebe Place.
Many members of the Clubs joined up, amongst them Punch cartoonist Bill Baynes, who joined the Rifle Brigade. A visit Bill paid to the Club whilst on leave is recorded in the memoirs of Bert Smith, the Steward of the day:
On Monday night the Club gave a dinner to Bill Baynes, and a riotous affair it was. ‘Bill’ drank innumerable pints of beer and sloe gin.
After dinner the company went into the billiard room, where singing and a general carousel took place. One member happened to say that any person serving in France must be lousy. Bill Baynes instantly let down his trousers and pulled up his shirt and said ‘Look at this and see if I am lousy’ which they did do. Afterwards they patrolled the Billiard Room, headed by Bill, singing ‘Ribs of beef and b-y great lumps of Duff.’
This went on until 2 o’clock and then they dispersed as best they could. On the following day Bill returned to France. Mr Bell went to Victoria with him, and Mr Lambert followed them and arrived just before the train started. and jumped over the barrier to wish ‘God speed’ to poor Sergeant Baynes; and that was the last we saw of him, as he was blown up by a shell three weeks afterwards. But he is often spoken about by his friends here.
The following Members of the Club are known to have given their lives in the 1914-18 war and the 1939-45 war that followed:
Philip H. Baynes (known as “Bill”)
Percy F. Gethin
Brian Hatton
James Mitchell White Halley
Charles Quiller Orchardson
Campbell Linsday Smith
Gerard H. Chowne
Brownell Cornwallis
William Hammond Smith
Gordon Dexter
Leonard Finn
William Haines
Tom Van Oss
Dazzle Painted Ships in the Mersey, off the Liverpool Waterfront
Leonard Campbell Taylor
The variety of service given by Members of the Club was remarkable: Cecil King helped Norman Wilkinson with Dazzle camouflage; Derwent Wood used his sculptural skills to manufacture facial prosthetics for wounded servicemen; and the likes of Will Dyson and Alfred Munnings worked as war artists at the Front.
The Club as a whole did war service, too, as a refuge for Belgian artists driven into exile by the German invasion – a fact commemorated by the maquette, the work of the sculptor Rousseau, which was presented to the Club as a gift from the Belgian nation after the War and which is displayed in the Dining Room to this day.
