Art Union of Liverpool
Foundation date: 1834
Function: Promotion of art, a lottery
Policy: Art Unions were lotteries that awarded art as prizes to their subscribers. An annual ballot was held when members tickets (usually one guinea each) were drawn from a drum and prizes were allotted accordingly. Generally prize winners were awarded a specific work or could select from a specified exhibition or a union might offer a mixture of both options. The unions often held an annual exhibition of prize winner's prizes which was open to subscribers and members of the public.
Meeting schedule: annual
History or description: Liverpool was one of the first cities in Britain to have an Art Union. The other early union was the Edinburgh based Association for the Promotion of the Fine Arts in Scotland (also founded in 1834). Between 1834-45 many cities established them and Art Unions flourished for the rest of the nineteenth century. There had been lotteries in Germany before this date and some Art Unions continued well past 1900. The most important for sculpture was the Art Union of London (founded 1837).
Works
Dates are usually the year a work was exhibited so may differ from date of production.
New entries have been made each time a work was exhibited due to a lack of evidence about the state, medium or edition shown.
Owned Lady Godiva
1851
Citing this record
'Art Union of Liverpool', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/organization.php?id=msib7_1206541945, accessed 24 Sep 2023]
