The Etching Club of London: A Taste for Painters’ Etchings

This installation, displaying over thirty rare prints primarily from the Muriel and Philip Berman Gift of European Prints, examines the revival of etching in nineteenth-century Britain by the Etching Club of London. Formed in 1838 by a group of professional artists to promote etching as a vital contemporary art form, the Etching Club included such important Victorian painters as Richard Redgrave, Charles West Cope, John Callcott Horsley, and William Holman Hunt.

Until its demise in 1885, the Etching Club produced original etchings primarily with narrative subjects, ranging from historical genre, to humorous anecdote, to scenes from contemporary poetry. Focusing upon a series of never-before-exhibited prints produced during the first years of the club’s existence, the show offers a unique opportunity to survey the Etching Club’s critical influence upon an emerging taste for painters’ etchings.