ABSTRACT
In spite of its forays into the worlds of ethnographic objects, the Club’s exhibition programme still maintained its traditional focus in its later years. The last exhibition mounted by the Club was British Medieval Art, which was presented from May to July of 1939.1 While it took place just a few months before the beginning of the Second World War, it was timed to be on display during the meeting of the International Congress of the History of Art, a semi-annual conference that was founded in Vienna in 1873.2 As reported in The Burlington Magazine, that year’s congress was held at the University of London and its theme was ‘British art and its relationship with other countries’.3 For the Club, this was an opportunity to participate in and support a major event in the academic art history calendar and it was commended by Pevsner for showing ‘medieval British art at its best’.4 This exhibition was to be followed by one on ‘Flower paintings and gardens in art’ but it had to be abandoned because the Club’s premises were bombed during the war. After the war ended, the Club was unable to continue and on 5 June 1950, the Club’s General Committee voted to close the Club for good. The Chairman, the Earl of Ilchester, had noted that in order to reopen the Club, after leaving its premises in Savile Row during the War, it would be necessary to secure the support of 250 members. Unfortunately, considerably fewer than that responded to a circular previously sent round. New premises had been found in Great Cumberland Place, but an annual income of £2500 would have been required to support this.5 At the next and final meeting of the committee, on 7 February 1951, it was decided to place the Club into voluntary liquidation, but also that:
[T]he liquidation be authorised on the conclusion of the winding up to offer the net proceeds of sale of the asset of the Club to the National Art Collections Fund as the only disinterested Institution which covers the whole field of art, the gift to be recorded as in memory of the Burlington Fine Arts Club.6
