Necrophiliacs and dancing bears: meet the wild artists of the Society of Dilettanti
A series of works on show at Sir John Soane’s Museum was funded by an 18th-century group who were truly mad, bad and dangerous to know
20 May 2021 • 5:00am
In their cups: various members of the Society of Dilettanti (1778), as painted by Joshua Reynolds
Credit: Alamy
All the boisterous patrician privilege of the Bullingdon Club crossed with the artistic hunter-gatherer instincts of the Tate trustees: that was, approximately, the Society of Dilettanti, founded in 1734 by some aristocratic courtiers around Frederick, the Prince of Wales who would predecease his father, George II. They had returned reluctantly from their classical tours in Italy “desirous of encouraging at home a taste for those objects which had contributed so much to their entertainment abroad”.