British Impressionism

Determined to set up an alternative to the academic position of the Royal Academy, in 1886, the New English Art Club was established by artists including Philip Wilson Steer and Sir George Clausen. The artists work was characterized by broad brush strokes, scenes of everyday life and the practice of working outside, Plein air, which they had witnessed while studying abroad in France. Walter Richard Sickert and Steer organised the first London Impressionist exhibition in 1889, in the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. James Abbott McNeill Whistler never exhibited with the group, but is considered to have heavily influenced British Impressionism with his rejection of traditional subject matter, composition and a finished surface. Likewise, John Singer Sargent, who had met and painted with Oscar-Claude Monet in France, brought many elements of French Impressionism into his portraits of British sitters.