Art Unions. Art unions are associations having for their object the promotion of an interest in the fine arts, and a more liberal patronage of them by the public. Though the origin of these unions seems to belong to the French, it was the Germans who fostered and developed them into the important aids to art they have since become. The Art Union of Munich was formed in 1823, and within ten years of that date, nearly every town of any consequence in Germany had one. Many of the German associations also directed their attention to the formation and encouragement of permanent galleries of art and other kindred objects; that of Cologne greatly assisting in the completion of its celebrated cathedral.
The first union in Britain was established in Edinburgh in 1834, at which time the patronage of the fine arts had reached such a low ebb, that, excluding portraits, the amount expended in the purchase of pictures in the Scottish Academy's annual exhibition was sometimes as low as £35, and never more than £300. The success of the association was immediate, and to its founders the public are in no small degree indebted for the rapid progress which art has made in this country during the last thirty years. It has otherwise followed the example of the German unions, inasmuch as nearly every year it purchases an important work of art, a picture or a statue, which is placed in the permanent National Gallery. Similar associations immediately followed in London and Dublin, and now almost every large town which has an annual art exhibition has also its art union. These associations are nearly all constituted alike, and consist of any number of individuals paying a certain sum, usually a guinea per annum, towards a fund, which, after deducting necessary expenses, is mainly devoted to the purchase of works of art for distribution as prizes to the subscribers.
The distribution is effected on the lottery principle, but a diversity of practice exists in the method of expending the funds. As this diversity has given rise to much controversy, it may be briefly explained. Firstly, the method common on the Continent, and adopted in Edinburgh, consists in putting, year by year, the whole sum to be devoted to the purchase of works of art, into the hands of a committee of gentlemen, who are chosen for their supposed taste in such matters, and requesting them to purchase pictures and other works of art for distribution by lot to the subscribers. Secondly, the plan followed by the London Art Union is to distribute the money itself by lot, and to insist on the prize-holders expending their prizes in pictures, selected by themselves, from certain exhibitions. If the object of the associations is to cultivate a taste for higher art than exists in the general community for the time being, then there is no doubt that the first method is the true one.
The weak point of art unions is the expense of management, which in some cases is a very high percentage of the total sum subscribed; and it may even be doubted whether, now that the patronage of art has grown to its present dimensions, they have not outlived their usefulness.
The difficulty of distinguishing between the lottery as part of the art union, and lotteries of an unquestionably illegal kind, led in 1846 to the passing of a special act for legalising bona-fide art unions, maintained solely for the encouragement of art. Unions, however, to be legal, must be incorporated by royal charter, or the instrument constituting the association and their rules be previously approved by the Privy-council. See EXHIBITIONS, LOTTERIES.