The Society

Our very first exhibition in the Winter Gardens in Ilkley was opened on Saturday February 15, 1981. Billed as the Yorkshire Artist Exhibition, it ran for four days, the main attraction being quite a collection of original work by David Hockney, backed by the 12 leading Yorkshire artists.
We weren't expecting the rush that we got.
Artists were coming to hang their paintings before all the stands were up.
Members of the public arrived before the artists had hung their work - and several sales were made while the paintings concerned were still on the floor!
Our best customer from that first exhibition was the Yorkshire Bank, who had just finished building their new headquarters on Merrion Street, Leeds. As all the walls were bare, they

needed quite a lot of paintings to cover the wide expanses. Come the time of the next exhibition in September 1981 we had overcome our teething problems and hopefully we were a lot more professional.
The twice-yearly exhibitions went from strength to strength, as we were learning as we went along. We found that our policy of holding an open exhibition with no selection was paying off, despite the disapproval of the critics. The standard of work continued to rise - and has risen continually with each exhibition ever since.

At the beginning of 1984, when my wife Margaret and I were still running the Castle Gallery, Kenneth Emsley (right), a retired law lecturer, came to see me.
He had recently been made a full member of the Society of Miniaturists (founded in London in May 1895) but was disappointed that he was unable to show his work as the Bankside Gallery in London had decided to dispense with the Society of Miniaturists and also the British Watercolour Society Art Club without further notice.
Because of the work we were

doing with the Yorkshire Artists Exhibition, Kenneth wanted us to take over the Miniature Society, which we did in 1985, along with the Royal Watercolour Society Art Club, which was also in danger of losing its Bankside home.
Fortunately another London society was also seeking a new direction - the British Watercolour Society. So after much negotiation, we amalgamated the RWS Art Club and the BWS together under the title of the British Watercolour Society and then brought all three societies to Ilkley.

In 1987 the British Society of Painters was established, with International Founder Members Pietro Annigoni, Rowland Hilder OBE, Terence Cuneo OBE, CVO, and David Shepherd OBE, who is now President.
Since then we have never looked back.
Instead of holding just two exhibitions a year in Ilkley, we held four - Spring, Summer, Autumn and Christmas. And for three years we held a further exhibition at the G-Mex Centre in Manchester, which sadly did not prove as popular as the Ilkley ones, as most of the artists and art-goers preferred the Yorkshire venue.
Over the years further exhibitions were held in Bradford, Leeds Town Hall and Cork Street, London, but again none was as popular or as busy as the Ilkley ones. Since the first exhibition

in 1981, we have held a grand total of 83 exhibitions - and raised a great deal of money for good causes.
Over the past few exhibitions we have raised more than £20,000 for the various charities that have taken space at the exhibitions so I would like to say a very big thank you to everyone, as we could not have survived this long without you.
The standard and quality of all the paintings on show has risen remarkably over the years.
The exhibitors in each section - Fellows, Members, Associates, Companions, Friends, Art Club artists and even artists showing for the first time - can all be complimented on the standard of their work. And exhibition by exhibition it just gets better and better!