History
The Chelsea Arts Club was originally located in rooms at no. 181 King's Road. In 1902, the club moved to larger premises at no. 143 Old Church Street. In 1933 the club's premises, which had an acre of garden, were remodeled. The clubhouse includes a snooker room, bedrooms, dining room, former 'ladies bar' turned private party room, and a garden.
From 1908 to 1958 the club held a series of public fancy dress balls at the Albert Hall, latterly on New Year's Eve, which raised funds for artists' charities, but they ceased owing to their notoriety and rowdiness, and private functions with lavish decorations and themes were held at the club instead.
In 1966 the club was redecorated, a new bar was opened, and membership was opened to women artists. Although normally a plain white building, the club exterior is occasionally painted to coincide with a themed event. In 2010 it was painted bright colours with images of circus performers affixed to the exterior, and in 2011 was painted to appear as if it had been bombed in order to coincide with celebrations marking 70 years since the end of The Blitz.
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“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)