Figure 1.1 Gawen Hamilton (1698–1737): A Conversation of Virtuosis ... at the Kings Arms, oil on
canvas, 87.6 × 111.5 cm, 1735. National Portrait Gallery, London.
Source: © National Portrait Gallery, London.Such societies were “social formations” in the Marxian sense that contemporary historical, social and
market conditions played a key role in their development. They were often founded on and helped to
disseminate a discourse of sociability, politeness, gentility and refinement (Myrone, 2008, 196), and
prepared the ground for artistic markets, practices and audiences that continued throughout the eighteenth
century to provide a wider context for artistic production than that offered by academies of high art. This
issue will be discussed further in Chapter 3, but it is perhaps worth mentioning here that communities
such as the Society of Dilettanti founded in the early 1730s as a society of art patrons, connoisseurs and
Grand Tourists, continued throughout the eighteenth century to bring together over the fine wines and
dining tables of gentlemen’s clubs artists, connoisseurs and other arbiters of taste. This particular society
sponsored research into antiquities and granted practical support to artists in the form, for example, of
travel grants to Greece and Rome.
An important early institution in London was the Saint Martin’s Lane Academy, which brought together
members of these early groups and remained active until the Royal Academy was established. This was