Victorian London : Mapping the Emergence of the Modern Art Gallery

Japanese Gallery

Thomas Joseph Larkin began his career as a civil engineer in Japan, where he acquired an interest and expertise in Japanese porcelain. He returned to London and opened the Japanese Gallery, to showcase and sell Japanese and Chinese art. The Japanese Gallery also held exhibitions of British water-colours, Western artists’ views of Japan, and occasional exhibitions of historical art. In later years, the gallery was known as the Renaissance Gallery (or Larkin Gallery). Larkin died in 1915, and the business was taken over by his son, Frederick J. Larkin.

Address: 7 King St, St James's

Start Date: by 1884

End Date: 1888

Other Locations:

14 Grafton Gallery (1881-84)
28 New Bond St (1889-at least 1900)
104 New Bond Street (as Renaissance Gallery) (by 1901 – at least 1919)

Dealer: Thomas Joseph Larkin

Selected exhibitions

Land of the Rising Sun: pictures of Japan by Messrs. John Varley and Chas E. Fripp, A.R.W.S. (1891) [NAL]

British Water-colour exhibition [1891] [NAL]

One hundred and eleven drawings of birds, fish, flowers and views by the celebrated Japanese artist Watanabe Seitei [1893] [NAL]

Pictures by early Dutch masters [1894] [NAL]

A cruise on the Mediterranean by Tristam Ellis [1895] [NAL]

Exhibition catalogues

National Art Library, London

British Library, London

Sources

Fletcher, Pamela and Anne Helmreich. “Selected galleries, dealers and exhibition spaces in London, 1850-1939.” In The Rise of the Modern Art Market in London, 1850-1939. Eds. Pamela Fletcher and Anne Helmreich. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. 306-307.

“The Late Thomas Joseph Larkin.” Connoisseur 41 (1915), 232.

“Thomas Joseph Larkin.” Burlington Magazine 26 (March 1915), 263.

Unless otherwise noted, the documentation of a gallery’s start and end dates at a location is drawn from listings in The Year’s Art.