of
the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce,
who lent their great room for the purpose.

The success of this, the first, public display of art was more than
equal to the general expectation. Yet there were some circumstances,
consequent to the arrangement of the pictures, with which the artists
were very justly dissatisfied; they were occasioned by the following
improprieties. The Society in the same year had offered premiums for the
best painting of history and landscape, and it was one of the conditions
that the pictures produced by the candidates should remain in their
great room for a certain time; consequently they were blended with the
rest, and formed part of the exhibition. As soon as it was known which
performances had obtained the premiums, it was naturally supposed, by
such persons who were deficient in judgment, that those pictures were
the best in the room, and consequently deserved the chief attention.
This partial, though unmerited, selection gave displeasure to the
artists in general. Nor were they pleased with the mode of admitting the
spectators, for every member of the Society had the discretionary
privilege of introducing as many persons as he chose, by means of
gratuitous tickets; and consequently the company was far from being
select, or suited to the wishes of the exhibition. These circumstances,
together with the interference of the Society in the concern of the
exhibition, determined the principal artists to withdraw themselves,
which they did in the next year.

Encouraged by the success of their first attempt, they engaged the great
room in Spring Garden, and their first exhibition at that place opened
on the 9th May 1761. Here they found it necessary to change their mode
of admission, which they did by making the catalogue the ticket of
admission; consequently one catalogue would admit a whole family in
succession, for a shilling, which was its price; but this mode of
admittance was still productive of crowd and disorder, and it was
therefore altered the next year. This exhibition, which was the second
in this country, contained several works of the best English artists,
among which many of the pictures were equal to any masters then living
in Europe; and so strikingly conspicuous were their merits, and so
forcible was the effect of this display of art, that it drew from the
pen of Roubilliac, the sculptor, the following lines, which were stuck
up in the exhibiti