| Roger Fry 1866-1934  |
Educated at King's College, Cambridge,
he took a first in the Natural Science "tripos", but continued
on to an influential role in the world of art, and has been credited
with establishing the reputations of such painters as Van Gogh,
Cézanne and Picasso. In 1896 he married Helen Coombe, who
was later diagnosed as incurably insane and confined to a mental
institution from 1910 until her death in 1937. Father of Julian
and Pamela Fry, lover of Vanessa Stephen and companion of Helen
Anrep (1885-1965). Appointed as Slade Professor of Art at Cambridge
in 1933. First Post-Impressionist Exhibition staged at Grafton Galleries
in 1910; the second in 1912. Founded the Omega Workshops in 1913.
"[H]e was not one of those characters who have, as we are
told by their biographers, an instinctive love of their kind.
His kind often amazed him and shocked him. His eyes, shining beneath
the bushy black eyebrows, would fix themselves suddenly, and,
looking as formidable as his father the Judge, he would pronounce
judgment. 'You are bolstering people up in their natural beastliness',
his words to Sir Charles Holmes who had given him, innocently,
a book on fishing recall some awkward moments in his company.
But if not gregarious he was sociable – 'incurably sociable'
he called himself. His friends meant so much to him that he would
give up the delights of wandering from village to village, from
gallery to gallery, in order to be with them. Spring after spring
he would exclaim, 'I feel very much inclined never to come
back to England, just to wander on into Spain and Morocco...',
but the sentence would end, 'if you wretches will live in London,
then to London I must be dragged back'." Published works: Links: |
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