Roger Fry

Roger Fry was born in London England.  He studied science at Cambridge University but his interests soon turned to art.  In 1891 Fry went to Italy and then Paris, to study painting.  He began to lecture on art, and became a critic and author.  Fry’s first book on Giovanni Bellini, the Venetian School painter c. 1426—1516, was published in 1899.  From 1905 to 1910, Fry was the Curator of Paintings for the Metropolitan Museum in New York.   His contact with the French painter Paul Cézanne in 1906 would be an important turning point.  Fry subsequently published articles on the work of Cézanne, Gauguin, Matisse and van Gogh, as he formulated influential ideas about modern art, aesthetics and design.   In 1910, Fry organized the first Post-Impressionist exhibition (and indeed, coined the phrase) for the Grafton Galleries in London, and later published books on Cézanne (1927), and Matisse (1930). 

As an artist, Fry was associated with the Bloomsbury Group in London – a semi-formal discussion group of writers and philosophers that included artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.  In 1913, he organized the Omega Workshops, a collective that encouraged the involvement of young artists in the design and decoration of everyday functional objects.  It remained active until 1919.  The radical innovations in artmaking were known to Fry but his own painting focused on ideas of unity – “the design” of image, composition and colour, rather than what he described as “sensation” or the notion of “visual invention” for its own sake.  Fry’s paintings are true to nature and visions of the everyday, and favoured the landscape as subject (many have commented on the influence of Cézanne).  Fry found his strongest inspiration in the south of France, as evidenced in the subject matter of the works presented here, dating from c.1920 to 1932.  Fry’s interest in the relationship of art and life can be seen in his painting of a French provincial market interior (1926-28) and the lithographs of church interiors produced in 1930.  But the connection to the avant-garde can best be appreciated in his Portrait of Lydia Lopokhova (1922), and its sign value more so than the ‘style’ of the painting (modern, but not radical).  Lopokhova was a principal dancer for the Ballets Russes, considered the leading dance company of its time, between 1909 and 1929, catering to a cosmopolitan Western audience.  It was known for its cross-disciplinary collaborations with the avant-garde, composers Igor Stravinsky, Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and Erik Satie, and artists including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, André Derain and the Russian visionary Nicholas Roerich. 

Period European furniture has been incorporated in the presentation of Fry's work -- to speak of the times -- but also to show that style is rarely a pure form.  As with Fry, who drew influence from the late Victorian and European Impressionism (and his own formulation of Post-Impressionism), the furniture is not stylistically homogenous but combines elements of late Victorian, art nouveau, the Arts and Crafts Movement and deco. The final appearance – the “vision and design” -- rests with the skill of the artisan, unifying different and diverse elements with an attention to detail.  The furniture becomes an object to be desired because it expresses ideas about taste and the times.

Installation Photos

[Margaret Priest]

[Rolph Scarlett]

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