The Rappahannock Art League was originally organized in 1949 in the Irvington Community Center by a few men and women desiring to improve their art skills. Now the league has grown to an organization of more than 400 members.

The purpose of the Rappahannock Art League is to organize, sponsor and encourage educational and cultural activities in the visual arts and crafts.

The League’s activities are focused in the lower Northern Neck and lower Middle Peninsula of Virginia.

The Art League has operated the RAL Studio Gallery at 19 N. Main Street in Kilmarnock since August 1999. The gallery, a showplace for the works of over 70 local artists, offers the largest collection of original art work and fine crafts for sale in the Northern Neck and Middle Peninsula of Virginia. The exhibiting artists’ work is juried before they are allotted exhibit space. Many of the artists have won regional and national prizes. The gallery managed as a cooperative and is directed and staffed by volunteers, many of them exhibiting artists. There were 8,600 visitors to the Gallery in 2005.

The Exhibit Room in the Studio Gallery offers changing exhibits designed to generate interest among the artists as well as the community-at-large. Many open shows encourage member artists not juried into the gallery to show their work as well. The Studio Gallery has collaborated with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Virginia Federation of Garden Clubs, the Lancaster Historical Society, the Virginia Pen Women, the Lancaster and Northumberland Public Schools, and Chesapeake Academy for monthly exhibits