| THE HISTORY OF THE RGI BY ROGER BILLCLIFFE |

 

 

1861 - 2004

 

By the middle of the 19th century Glasgow had become one of the most important cities of the British Empire, a centre of commerce, industry and population unequalled in Scotland and with few peers in the rest of the British Isles. The city had its complement of theatres, concert halls and libraries, a major art collection donated by Archibald McLellan and a number of art dealers but, surprisingly, no regular exhibition of the works of contemporary painters and sculptors. From the 1780s various organisations had attempted to fill this gap but none of them had either the financial backing or qualities of direction to maintain their initial impetus. It was with this in mind that on 29 May 1861, a group of ten or so of Glasgow’s prominent citizens met in the Queen’s Rooms, Buchanan Street, to discuss the establishment of annual exhibitions of the work of living artists. Roughly half of this group were artists, John Graham (later Sir John Graham-Gilbert), John Mossman and C N Woolworth being the best known, but a local businessman, Henry Simson, was elected Chairman at the meeting and was charged with arranging a public meeting and finding further financial support for the new Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts.

 

The public meeting endorsed the plans of the steering committee and Graham, along with Daniel MacNee RSA (who was co-opted to the committee) was given the task of arranging the first exhibition at the end of 1861. A budget of £500 was agreed and Glasgow Corporation agreed to the hire of the Corporation Galleries (now the McLellan Galleries) in Sauchiehall Street. One hundred and eleven paintings were sold but so many works were submitted that the costs increased to over £1,000 and a profit of only £55.2.3d was achieved. It was however, both an artistic and an enormous popular success attracting 39,099 visitors, with the Minute Book recording that a large proportion of these were purchasers of “Working Men’s Tickets”. Despite the disappointing financial results the Committee were encouraged by the reception the exhibition had received both from the artistic community and the general public. Accordingly, a formal Council and Constitution were voted in and plans were made for a second exhibition.

 

The shows, which followed, proved the financial viability of the new Institute and the quality of work submitted for exhibition vindicated the original decision to embark upon such an ambitious project. This early success, in some ways unexpected, brought with it a number of problems. These all centred upon the rapidly growing numbers of works sent in for the annual exhibitions. One of the reasons that the Institute was so eagerly welcomed by the artistic community in the West of Scotland was the relative difficulty these artists had in getting the work accepted by the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. So many artists wished to send work to the Glasgow exhibition that the Institute had to employ more staff to deal with submissions and arrange more gallery space to accommodate all the works. This placed a greater strain on the only suitable premises, the Corporation Galleries, and the Corporation of the City of Glasgow began to express its misgivings about the Institute’s repeated demands for accommodation. In particular, the Corporation was most unhappy about renting its Galleries to the Institute for four or five months of the year - which involved packing and putting into store the McLellan Collection of Old Masters. The early Minute Books of the Institute are filled with reports from both sides about the safety of the City’s art collection, the validity of exhibitions of contemporary painting and other such contentious matters. The relationship between Institute and Corporation was, at best, uneasy but the popularity of the exhibition with both the “art-buying” and the “art-loving” public ensured its continuing annual appearance at the Corporation Galleries until 1879 when the Institute opened its own Gallery in Sauchiehall Street (a building better known to more recent generations of Glaswegians as Pettigrew and Stephens’ department store).

 

As the exhibitions grew in size, so did they in quality. The foundation of the Institute did little to soften the Royal Scottish Academy’s attitude to painters from the West; indeed, in some ways there was a distinct polarisation between the two institutions with each concentrating on the work submitted from its immediate environs. The Council of the Institute, however, decided that they were not interested merely in arranging exhibitions of local artists. The original intention had been to bring the next of modern painting to Glasgow, no matter its origins. Accordingly the Institute decided that its show should aim beyond its own geographical area to encompass the best in modern painting from the whole of Britain and further afield. A start was made by borrowing paintings from local collectors. John Graham lent pictures by Turner and Constable, and the practice grew in the 1870s to include many works by French painters which had recently entered Scottish collections. Agents were recruited in London to seek out pictures for the Institute and by 1880 some of the most famous English artists were regular exhibitors in Glasgow, Albert Moore, Millais, Holman Hunt, Poynter, Leighton, Watts and Burne Jones joined London Scots, such a Pettrie and Orchardson, MacWhirter and Farquharson as contributors of major paintings to the annual exhibitions at the Institute. French and Dutch paintings became regular features too, either borrowed from collectors such as James Donald and Sir Peter Coats or contributed for sale by the artists’ dealers in London and Glasgow. Many a Millet or Corot, Israels or Maris found a permanent home in Glasgow after its appearance on the walls of the Institute.

 

Not surprisingly the popular success of these exhibitions increased the Institute’s profits - 45,327 people visited the second exhibition, 53,000 visitors were received at the third and the figures rose steadily for twenty years. Both the quality and quantity of works on show grew and the strain on the accommodation offered by the Corporation spurred the Institute to build a Gallery of its own. For some years the Institute had been putting part of its profits into the purchase of works from the exhibition and by the sale of these, and some judicious borrowings, sufficient funds were raised for the new project. J J Burnet was chosen as architect, a site was acquired in Sauchiehall Street between West Campbell Street and Wellington Street, and the new Galleries opened with the annual exhibition of 1879.

 

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