It met in rooms at 30 Charles Street, off Berkeley Square, which had previously been the studio of George Frederic Watts and then of Henry Wyndham Phillips.
[1] The membership was limited to 60,[1] and included literary men, artists, civil servants and political figures.
Watts joined, as did the writers Matthew James Higgins (Jacob Omnium), Francis Turner Palgrave, Edward Fitzgerald and Anthony Trollope.
Other members included the Prince of Wales,[2] Henry Layard, Sir Robert Morier, James Spedding and William Gladstone.
The painting, A Story from Boccaccio, depicted the woman fleeing towards a group of classically dressed figures.