Sketchy company
The creative and slightly ignoble history of the London Sketch Club, whose members drew and drank their way around several Marylebone premises
Words: Glyn Brown
Illustrations: Matthew Hancock
In the 1880s, London was overrun with artists. It was almost an infestation. And this is not simply your illustrious portrait painters; in an era before cameras, illustrators of one sort or another were needed for almost every book or piece of information. Central London’s Great Titchfield Street was a stronghold of engravers and home to John Pye, champion of their fight to be recognised by the arts establishment. Clipstone Street, a few streets north, was the site of one of the earliest artists’ clubs, the Clipstone Street Artists’ Society, which had begun in Gray’s Inn Lane in 1830 as the Rustic Society. This is the beginning of the club we’re interested in, which still exists in a different—though not that different—form: a liberal, eccentric, bohemian stronghold in a world desperately trying to find its way back to a liberal, eccentric, bohemian sensibility.
The point of the Rustic Society, later renamed the Artists’ Society for the Study of Historical, Poetical and Rustic Figures, was to bring together fellow artists and tradesmen who often worked alone, allowing them to keep in touch and not go mad from the isolation, hone their skills, and just relax. In 1838, an evening sketching club was launched. The meeting place was “a shed or series of sheds” in a former stonemason’s yard behind the Fitzroy Arms. It sounds a bit basic and quite chilly—not good on the fingers if you’re doing art—and so, in late 1854, the society moved into purpose-built rooms at number 1 Langham Chambers, Langham Street, Marylebone.
The artists’ block was alternative enough, ranged in a series of live-work studios and offering life classes that were considerably more interesting than the training on offer at the stuffy Royal Academy schools. But it was the newly-named Langham Sketching Club on the top floor—whose meetings started to get a reputation for virtuosity mixed with a bantering raffish-ness; a conviviality bordering on truly bonkers—that was soon much better known. It pulled together the most inspired of a rare and celebrated breed: the black and white illustrator. Unlike most fine artists, these weren’t all privileged people. Many had blue collar backgrounds, but illustration was a glamourous job—these graphic artists were as loved and respected as actors, musicians or music hall stars—and if you were good at it, you could be part of a very fun world in which your talent really mattered. Illustrated books, papers and magazines were in virtually every home and the artists were household names.
Bald and ponderous
According to one contemporary critic, the building itself was “bald and ponderous-looking… we are at a loss to know why artists should be lodged in so jail-like a structure”. Another account describes it as “a doubtful, white-faced erection, which might be considered as baths and washhouse, a mechanics’ institution, or a private theatre”. Inside it was lovely, though, some of the rooms quite gorgeous. The main downstairs room had a long table, plaster casts, blackboards for resting pictures, and a library. There were tiers of seats and rails with gas lights to paint by. In the 1850s, membership of the Langham alone was 200-plus.
So here we have the cream of London’s artists. Every Friday night, at 7pm sharp from October to May (because when the weather’s good everyone’s working outside), the members get together in their studio-clubhouse-dining room and draw for two hours on any given subject. Everyone took part in this, including such luminaries as Lewisham-born Arthur Rackham, the man who’s big on infinitely detailed fairy story illustrations; Sir John Tenniel (cartoonist for Punch, among others, and illustrator of Alice in Wonderland); and Charles Keene. The results would be pinned up and there’d be lively discussion on every one.
After that, there was a hearty supper of “the best bread and cheese and beer that man could desire”, and the rest of the evening would be spent in good-hearted chat or singing or monologues or playing instruments or even doing a few magic tricks.
In 1898, a huge row broke out about whether the suppers should be hot or cold. It seems preposterous, but actually after a day’s work in the cold and a couple of hours sketching, hot grub might well be important. Every penny had to be earned and even the best illustrators weren’t well paid. But it was about more than that. The older members of the Langham (who all wanted a refined cold dinner) thought the young pups (who all wanted hot, and more of it) had got too big for their boots and found their irreverence and high spirits tiresome and wearing. A break had to come.
Fly in the ointment
A band of renegades launched the London Sketch Club. The inaugural meeting was held at the Florence restaurant at 7pm on 1st April. The members were all artists but every Friday night, when the two-hour sketch (they kept that tradition) was done, various lay members—writers, actors, singers and well-known men about town—were admitted, everyone had their say about the work, and the infamous hot supper appeared. Then there might be a professional entertainer, or the members would come up with wacky japes. The only fly in the ointment would be the appearance, presumably as guests, of any “self-opinionated bumptious snobs infatuated with their own self-importance”. These people would be very roughly handled.
One of the noisiest founder members was Phil May. Born in Leeds and a good silhouettist, May was a dandy and a generous man. His break came on London’s political magazine the St Stephen’s Review. Editor William Allison needed a double page illustration pronto when the artist he’d commissioned failed him, and found some impressive sketches by the 19-year-old boy. “I asked someone to ascertain if this boy could do a cartoon very quickly of all the principal characters of the moment. The answer was affirmative. May was a lean, cadaverous-looking youth with close cropped, very dark hair and eyes that looked through you like gimlets. There was a fire of genius in them. I knew right off I’d found something quite abnormally excellent.” May kept his own horse and rode to meetings in central London on it, often forgetting where he’d parked the thing. A notorious clubber, it seemed impossible that he could combine his raucous, alcohol-dependent lifestyle with so much top-quality work, but he did. He died of tuberculosis at just 39.
Tom Browne was another founder member. Born in Nottingham, he started work at 11 as a milliner’s errand boy, but was then apprenticed to a printer and started to send off freelance cartoons. Moving to London, he became insanely successful. He was asked to produce the front page of a comic and invented a comic strip featuring two creations, Weary Willie and Tired Tim. The comic began to rack up weekly sales of 600,000, due to these two characters. You’d think other artists would start doing the same thing, but they didn’t; Browne had the market at his mercy. He developed via Punch and later had work accepted at the Royal Academy. This is the very early Mad Man who came up with the strutting, top-hatted logo for Johnnie Walker whisky which made it the biggest selling whisky in the world. Very sadly, Browne died after cancer surgery, also at 39.
The third major founder was Dudley Hardy, who took inspiration from Toulouse Lautrec and put serious attention into poster work. His drawing was bright, with an almost French, art nouveau feel, and it started a craze for illustrative posters. He was good value after the two-hour sketch on Fridays, too. “With most convincing earnestness,” remembers one commentator, “he would extemporise an Italian opera, taking on all parts himself because the rest of the company were too convulsed with laughter to help him.” Another time he helped stage an elaborate mock bullfight. Harry Rountree, the children’s illustrator, led the matadors, while the bull was “anonymous and persistent”. All this time, the group regularly showed its work publicly, offering the two-hour sketches cheap (many would later be worth a bomb) to buy staples—like booze.
Indoor bonfire
The club had briefly been ensconced on Wells Street, off Oxford Street, but in 1913 it moved to 246a Marylebone Road, later the site of Woolworths’ head office. The entrance was at the end of a long passage and you knocked on an Old Bailey prison door, apparently from the condemned cell. A few steps further you passed through a door from Newgate Prison, above which was the stage entrance sign from the old Empire Theatre. The previous owners had used the site as a chapel. Club member John Hassall, a tall, handsome man from Walmer in Kent, whose son was elected to membership on the day he was born—his profile picture featured a dummy and was entitled ‘Baby Dingwall Hassall’—complained the walls were as clean as ‘disinfectant’, so he did what any sensible person would do and lit a bonfire from a hay bale in the middle of the floor to give the walls the authentic look of a smoky old club. What a card.
A tavern bar was recreated in one corner under the sign ‘The Sketchers’ Arms’. In an adjoining room marked ‘Private’, the Club’s beloved cook Mabel turned out steak puddings, roasts and a series of caustic comments. The building’s glass roof leaked, but no one minded. Occasionally a mouse would tear round the sketching room and then vanish.
All those who could joined up at the start of the first world war. Children’s artist Harold Earnshaw lost his right arm but learned to draw again with his left. John Hassall had his nerves shattered. He came back and published two propaganda books. During the second world war, Hassall drew the Belgian Canal Boat Fund poster, free, for the charity providing food, clothes and medical aid to civilians behind Allied lines; his numerous other war posters earned him a civil pension from George VI.
After the war ranks were depleted, but at least the building, virtually alone in a row of blitzed houses, still stood. Numerous entertainers, including a young Charlie Chaplin, had come and gone. But when Woolworths made an offer for the site that couldn’t be refused, the club bought the warmer, airy property in Dilke Street, Chelsea, where it remains, and had money left for little necessities. But the members were getting older, no one new was joining, and things got into a rut. Photography had had its way with the popularity of drawing and, quite shockingly, although women are admitted to the club and all its social events, the only females allowed on drawing nights were and are the life models. It’s a gentleman’s club, it still has a boysy attitude and you can only hope they get with the plot eventually.
But. The club’s eccentric, with a good heart. Illustration is in demand again now and membership is growing (it’s included Gerald Scarfe, Peter Blake, Fleet Street cartoonists Jak and Mac, and for some reason, Reginald Bosanquet). If you can get in as the guest of a member it’s a cool, evocative place to find yourself (and The Sketchers’ Arms, and at least one prison door). It still seems to have the ethos that made it what it is.
There’s a story, set before the first world war, of sozzled actor and member EJ Odell leaving a bar at midnight. He saw a body lying in the gutter and realised it was another member, who gasped, “Get me up, I’m drunk.”
“My dear chap,” said Odell, “I’m not capable, but I can join you.” Soon after, John Hassall rolled up and, paralytic, joined the throng. It’s just a shame no one was there to draw it.