Chairman:
Evan Millner
esq. 114 Guinness Ct, Mansell St,
E1 Secretary: Richard Wilson
esq. 28 Lucam Lodge, The Garners,SS4 1DS
_________________________________________________________________________________
A Life Drawing Group in London £5 per
session Bring your own materials -
drawing boards available
Coffee, tea and biscuits provided
________________________________________________________________________________ The Toynbee Hall Art Club at
present meets
fortnightly on
alternate Sundays from 2.30 - 5pm throughout the year for
Life
and
Costume Drawing at Toynbee Hall, 28 Commercial Street,
London E1.
We either meet in the Elderly Care Centre or the main Lecture Hall,
availability depending.
Please allow extra time for parking as there is a local
vibrant street market on Sundays - which winds down around
2pm.
Nearest Tube Stations: Aldgate East, Aldgate and Liverpool Street
2005 Programme Schedule -
Spring/early Summer
April
17th May
1st, 15th
& 29th June
12th & 26th _________________________
A
brief History of the Toynbee Hall Art Club
The Toynbee Hall Art Club was
founded by Charles Robert Ashbee,
a father of the Arts and Crafts Movement, during his period of
residence at the Toynbee Hall. The first students were mainly
local residents, and workers, notably from the Whitechapel Post Office.
Before coming to Toynbee as a young idealistic student, Ashbee studied
at Wellington, and then at Kings’ College, Cambridge, where he read
Ruskin. In the early 1880s Ashbee had gone to hear his friend,
the socialist writer Edward Carpenter, speak to the Hammersmith Branch
of the Socialist League at William Morris’ home.
In 1886 he was selected as a resident at the Toynbee Hall Universities’
Settlement, and began training to be an architect under G.F. Bodley.
The Toynbee University Settlement brought undergraduates into
contact with the people of the East End. Ashbee joined Toynbee as the
only architect in resident. Ashbee began at Toynbee by organizing
evening classes where men and boys from the slums could study the
writing of John Ruskin. Encouraged by the success of his Ruskin
classes, he also began to teach the craft of figurative drawing and
decoration, and this group
became the nucleus of the Toynbee Art Club.
While the Toynbee Club continued, Ashbee also formed the Guild and
School of Handicraft, in 1888. Four members of the Toynbee Hall Art
Club formed the core of his Guild, which began with a working
capital of only 50 pounds. The guild intially met at the Toynbe
Hall, before relocating to Essex House, and then, finally, to the
Cotswalds. The Toynbee classes, however, still continued, and they
continue to this day, as ever under the patronage of the Toynbee Hall.
Ashbee founded the Guild with the revolutionary idea that
training in craft and design could be conducted alongside actual
production, a dramatic departure from contemporary practice. He sought
to restore lost traditions associated with pre-industrial production
and the bonds of comradeship that he thought humanized the workshop,
and urged that silversmiths, craftsmen, and designers should work
together.
The present Toynbee Art Club focuses on life drawing, however, we
intend to expand our field of interest, and rekindle the pioneering
spirit of our founding father, with a more active goal of once again
teaching the craft of drawing and painting in the ethos of Ruskin
and the Old Masters at the
Toynbee Hall. We see ourselves continuing to play a role in the
development of talent in East London, and aspire to further the wider
social aims of the Club’s founding father at Toynbee Hall.
A Life Drawing Group in London £5 per
session Bring your own materials -
hand-held drawing boards available
A Life Drawing Group in London £5 per
session Bring your own materials -
drawing boards available ________________________________________________________________________________
