Roger Fry (1866-1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting and Cezanne in particular, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. He was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain, and emphasised the formal properties of paintings over the "associated ideas" conjured in the viewer by their representational content. He was described by the art historian Kenneth Clark as "incomparably the greatest influence on taste since Ruskin ... In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry". The taste Fry influenced was primarily that of the Anglophone world, and his success lay largely in alerting an educated public to a compelling version of recent artistic developments of the Parisian avant-garde.
Roger Fry: Friends and Influences
Exhibition - 20th November 2025 - 15th January 202
His close circle of friends and fellow artists included Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Jean Marchand amongst others. In addition he encouraged the younger generation of artists with enterprises such as the Omega Workshops - artists like Gaudier-Brzeska and Edward Wolfe were employed by Fry to create modern designs for furniture and fabrics.
We are pleased to be offering a second group of works from Roger Fry's personal collection and inherited by his descendants alongside works from a private collector and from our own gallery inventory.
November 11, 2025
