Collection: RE Society Biography and Art Gallery Collection

The RE Society or The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers, known until 1991 as the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, is an art institution based in London, England. The Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers was a society of etchers established in London in 1880 and given a Royal Charter in 1888. The RE Society was established as the Society of Painter-Etchers for the promotion of original etching as an art form, inspired by the French group of the same name which existed in Paris. The first six fellows, all elected on 31 July 1880, were Francis Seymour Haden, Heywood Hardy, Hubert von Herkomer, Alphonse Legros, Robert Walker Macbeth and James Tissot (Whistler had a row with his brother-in-law, Haden, and would not join). The lithographs by the RE Society are all inspired by vintage images created by artists from the Golden Age of Posters (1885-1939), and includes works by well-remembered artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, and Cappiello.

The RE Society begins the process to create the lithograph with a powerful Golden Age poster as selected by a panel of internationally prominent poster art experts and artists. Working directly from rare originals, a highly skilled contemporary artist draws each stone or plate by hand. Carefully selecting the ink to assure that each color is recreated to the exact, pristine colors of the poster as originally intended, the artist uses a separate hand-drawn plate for each color. From these hand-drawn plates, the Re edition is then pulled by a team of highly trained artisans using a rare flatbed Mariononi Voirin press manufactured in Paris in the 1800’s. These marvelous antique presses are by far the finest ever made for producing lithographs and only a few remain in the world. It is this time consuming, expensive “low-tech” fine art process, so different from today’s high speed methods of mass-producing posters, that provides so much of the marvelous aesthetic qualities of the original vintage images.