The Rose and Crown Club was a club for artists, collectors and connoisseurs of art in early 18th-century London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

History

The Rose and Crown Club "for Eminent Artificers of this Nation" was formed by 1704, when the engraver George Vertue

George Vertue

George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.-Life:...

 was admitted; while it lasted, the club was among the more important of clubs for artists and connoisseurs. The club was initially "a bawdy assembly of younger artists and cognoscenti, which met weekly" and apparently held its meetings at the Rose and Crown public house

Public house

A public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment fundamental to the culture of Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. There are approximately 53,500 public houses in the United Kingdom. This number has been declining every year, so that nearly half of the smaller...

. in addition to Vertue, members included Bernard Lens III, Christian Friedrich Zincke

Christian Friedrich Zincke

Christian Friedrich Zincke was a German miniature painter active in England in the 18th century.-Life:He was born in Dresden and died in London. He apprenticed his father and also studied painting. In 1706 he came to London to work at Charles Boit's studio, and when Boit left for France 8 years...

, William Hogarth

William Hogarth

William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...

, Peter Tillemans

Peter Tillemans

Peter Tillemans was a Flemish painter, best known for his works on sporting and topographical subjects. Alongside John Wootton and James Seymour, he was one of the founders of the English school of sporting painting....

, and Michael Dahl

Michael Dahl

Michael Dahl was a Swedish portrait painter, who lived and worked in London for the larger part of his life....

.

The members of the club were known as the 'Rosacoronians'. An unfinished Hogarthian

William Hogarth

William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...

 painting in the Ashmolean Museum

Ashmolean Museum

The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...

 attributed to the Scottish painter Gawen Hamilton

Gawen Hamilton

Gawen Hamilton , easily confused with the later, more prominent Gavin Hamilton, was a Scottish painter working in London, a member of the Rose and Crown Club, who is known for some 'conversation pieces' depicting clubs of artists...

, An Assembly of Virtuosi, shows a group of fifteen men, including eight who are identified in an etching of the painting by R. Cooper, published by W. B. Tiffin (1829), and it has been suggested that this is a group portrait of the Rosacoronians. The group includes Hamilton himself, Michael Dahl

Michael Dahl

Michael Dahl was a Swedish portrait painter, who lived and worked in London for the larger part of his life....

, John Vanderbank

John Vanderbank

John Vanderbank was an English portrait painter and book illustrator, who enjoyed a high reputation for a short while during the reign of King George I, but who died relatively young due to an intemperate and extravagant lifestyle.-Life:Vanderbank was born in London, the eldest son of John...

, the architect William Kent

William Kent

William Kent , born in Bridlington, Yorkshire, was an eminent English architect, landscape architect and furniture designer of the early 18th century.He was baptised as William Cant.-Education:...

, and John Michael Rysbrack

John Michael Rysbrack

Johannes Michel or John Michael Rysbrack, original name Jan Michiel Rijsbrack , was an 18th-century Flemish sculptor. His birth-year is sometimes given as 1693 or 1684....

 the sculptor. Vertue listed the painter and engraver Gerhard Bockman

Gerhard Bockman

-Works:Bockman was known as an artist in Amsterdam; he worked in England from the early part of the eighteenth century.He painted several portraits of William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, and a life-size half-length of Edward Russell, 1st Earl of Orford...

 as a member in 1724.

The club was well connected with the older-established Virtuosi of St Luke (c. 1689–1743), with which it is sometimes confused, although it was less prestigious.

The Rose and Crown Club remained in existence until 1745 and held its last meeting at the Half-Moon Tavern. Bignamini notes in his George Vertue that