""So much has been written about Bloomsbury art," wrote the British historian Fiona MacCarthy in 1999, "it is easy to forget how little we have seen of it." Nearly three decades on, this remains true for the person long thought to be the most important in the group. The forthcoming solo presentation of paintings by Roger Fry (1866-1934) at Charleston in Firle, East Sussex, aims to rectify this oversight."
"Virginia Woolf memorably records the moment she and her sister Vanessa Bell borrowed a painting from a friend (John Maynard Keynes) that Fry was desperate to copy: Bell "left the room and reappeared with a small parcel about the size of a large slab of chocolate. On one side are six apples by Cézanne. Roger very nearly lost his senses. I've never seen such a sight of intoxication. He was like a bee on a sunflower.""
"An old school polymath, Fry was the art historian who introduced Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin to the US and UK publics, as Post-Impressionists; he was the designer who co-founded the Omega Workshops; and the editor who co-founded the Burlington Magazine. Fry taught at the University of Cambridge, curated at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and was instrumental in the advent of the Courtauld Institute and studio pottery in the UK."
Roger Fry, a central but underexposed figure of the Bloomsbury circle, receives a solo presentation of his paintings at Charleston to address long-standing neglect. Fry introduced Cézanne, Seurat, van Gogh and Gauguin to British and American audiences as Post-Impressionists, co-founded the Omega Workshops and the Burlington Magazine, taught at Cambridge, curated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and helped establish the Courtauld Institute and studio pottery in the UK. Contemporary witnesses recall Fry's intense devotion to painting. Charleston's director spent two years seeking works Fry exhibited or prized, assembling loans including pieces such as the Courtauld's Still Life With Coffee Pot (1915).
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