Its members were figures of genuine local colour typified by the artist who would don his “dressing-gown” and mount his horse to ride through the ancient misty glades of the New Forest, silhouetted in full characteristic sweep of a robe!
It was unusual characters such as this who dominated the early years of the Society’s history.
The official movement to form the Society, by Major-General William Lacy, who was then living in the well-to-do district of Banister Park, took place in October 1887.
He called a first meeting at the ancient Philharmonic Rooms in Southampton’s Above Bar, with the expressed purpose of formally founding the Southampton Art Society on the basis of a smaller circle that already existed, known as the Pen and Pencil Club.
Lacy’s masterplan was to combine this club with the professional team of the Ordnance Survey Art Association, a body founded in 1882 that had staged a successful exhibition of 350 works at the self-same Philharmonic Rooms.
After the inevitable wrangling required to combine such strong-headed folks, the Southampton Art Society was founded, with Major-General Lacy as its first president, succeeded in 1890 by Sir William Aitken.
The Southampton Art Society regularly have open-air sketching expeditions into the surrounding countryside and, no doubt, the haunting, spectral loveliness of the New Forest itself.
But the greatest link to the original royal hunting ground came in the form of one of its most colourful characters – the famous artist, John Emms.
Described as a very fine painter, an artist who put on to canvas the very life of the horse and foxhounds, Emms was born and bred in the New Forest village of Lyndhurst.
His life, like his art, was dramatic, full of a love for the flamboyant.
His eccentricities were famous, the most memorable of which was the image of him riding through the dense depths of the forest, a huge, wide-brimmed hat cloaking his face, his shoulders enveloped in a magnificent, long, swirling cloak.
He held lavish parties, showered his wife and friends with expensive gifts, a flamboyant lifestyle which was ultimately his downfall.
Borrowing extensively to maintain his lifestyle, he quickly fell into debts, losing his beautiful home, his friends and finally his beloved wife, ending his days in quiet poverty in the home of a kindly woman of the village who had offered shelter to him.
