The Society of Painters in Tempera was founded in 1901 by Christiana Herringham

Christiana Herringham

Christiana Jane Herringham was a British artist, copyist and art patron. She is noted for her part in establishing the National Art Collections Fund in 1903 to help preserve Britain's artistic heritage....

 (1852–1929) and a group of British painters who were interested in reviving the art of tempera

Tempera

Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...

 painting. Lady Herringham was an expert copyist of the Italian Old Masters and had translated Il Libro dell' Arte o Trattato della Pittura, Cennino Cennini's fifteenth-century handbook on fresco

Fresco

Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...

 and tempera. The artist John Dickson Batten (1860-1932) was the Society's principal organiser and also its Honorary Secretary.

In 1904, members of the Society were: Edwin Austin Abbey, Robert Bateman

Robert Bateman (artist)

Robert Bateman was an English painter, illustrator, sculptor, architect and scholar.He was the third son of James Bateman , the accomplished horticulturist and landowner, who built Biddulph Grange and its gardens, in Staffordshire.Robert attended the Royal Academy schools in the 1860s, and from...

, John Dickson Batten

John Dickson Batten

John Dickson Batten was a British painter of figures in oils, tempera and fresco and a book illustrator and print maker. He was born in Plymouth, Devon. He was an active member of the Society of Painters in Tempera, with his wife Mary Batten, a gilder...

, his wife Mary Batten, Robert Anning Bell

Robert Anning Bell

Robert Anning Bell was an English artist and designer.He was born in London in 1863, the son of Robert George Bell, a cheesemonger, and Mary Charlotte Knight. He studied at University College School, the Westminster College of Art and the Royal Academy Schools, followed by a time in Paris. On...

, Lota Bowen

Lota Bowen

Lota Bowen was a British painter. She was a member of the Society of Women Artists , the Society of Painters in Tempera, and the 91 Art Club, a Chelsea club for women artists. Born in Armley, Yorkshire, she studied in Ludovici's studio London; later in Rome under Santoro and in the night classes...

, John Cooke, Walter Crane

Walter Crane

Walter Crane was an English artist and book illustrator. He is considered to be the most prolific and influential children’s book creator of his generation and, along with Randolph Caldecott and Kate Greenaway, one of the strongest contributors to the child's nursery motif that the genre of...

, Louis Davis

Louis Davis

Louis Davis was an English watercolourist, book illustrator and stained-glass artist. He was active in the Arts and Crafts Movement and Nikolaus Pevsner referred to him as the last of the Pre-Raphaelites....

, Mary Sargant Florence

Mary Sargant Florence

Mary Sargant Florence was a British painter of figure subjects, mural decorations in fresco and occasional landscapes in watercolour and pastel. She was born in London, née Sargant, sister of the sculptor F.W. Sargant. She studied in Paris under Luc-Olivier Merson and at the Slade School under...

 and Roger Fry

Roger Fry

Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...

. Other notable members included Bernard Sleigh

Bernard Sleigh

Bernard Sleigh was an English mural painter, stained-glass artist, illustrator and wood engraver, best known for his work An Ancient Mappe of Fairyland, Newly Discovered and Set Forth which is in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.-Education and work:Sleigh was apprenticed to a wood...

, Joseph Southall

Joseph Southall

Joseph Edward Southall RWS NEAC RBSA was an English painter associated with the Arts and Crafts movement.A leading figure in the nineteenth century revival of painting in tempera, Southall was the leader of the Birmingham Group of Artist-Craftsmen—one of the last outposts of Romanticism in...

 and Estella Canziani

Estella Canziani

Estella Canziani was a British portrait and landscape painter, an interior decorator and a travel writer and folklorist.- Life and works :...

.

The Society, which was also referred to as the Society of Mural Decorators and Painters in Tempera, published a number of papers on the subject of tempera painting which have been edited in three volumes.

After going into decline, the Society was revived in 1997 as the Society of Tempera Painters and is now established in the United States of America and the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

.