Fry

Roger Fry refuses to be pigeon-holed as do I. Roger Fry is not a man of the world, just as I am not a woman of it. Roger Fry holds something in reserve, detaches momentarily from conversation; again I see the similarity in myself. The impulse to be more forthcoming is checked; the mind wanders someplace else.
But Roger Fry, unlike myself, has a reputation – as lecturer, as art critic – to live up to. His Word, sometimes dictatorial, often ridiculed, was read, was listened to, and whilst it divided rather than united opinion in 1910 it was firm in the conviction that Post-Impressionism was, would be, a thing. And so it proved, for attitudes shifted, though the growth was perhaps more gradual than Roger Fry anticipated. The pictures stayed the same, the public changed, although too late for some of the artists concerned. But still, the appreciation we now feel runs deep.
Roger Fry was indeed the Father of British modern painting.

Picture credit: Roger Fry, self-portrait, 1928 (source: WikiArt)

See Roger Fry by Virginia Woolf. For a more contemporary, up-to-date perspective read Frances Spalding. 

Written January 2022.