Roger Fry

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Out of all the most eminent artistic and literary figures to emerge from the ‘Bloomsbury Group’ it was perhaps Roger Eliot Fry who held the most significant influence over his peers. Commenting in her biography of Fry (published in 1940) Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) noted of Fry that ‘he had more knowledge and experience than the rest of us put together’. His authoritative handling of the Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912 held at the Grafton Galleries in London assured Fry’s position as the most informative interpreter of French avant-garde tendencies in Britain at the time. To embrace French Modernism with such a confident and intuitive understanding of artists such as Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Paul Gauguin (1848-1903), Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890), and Henri Matisse (1869-1954), indicated that Fry was significantly ahead of his time.

It was during this period in his career, following on from a curatorial position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, that Fry became fully integrated into the Bloomsbury circle. Bringing with him his unrivalled knowledge of Art History and French Modernism, Fry had a profound impact on the artistic direction of two of the group’s most prominent members; Duncan Grant (1885-1978) and Vanessa Bell (1879-1961). It is at this point in their respective careers that their painting becomes more aesthetically concerned with formal relationships within the work of art itself. This shift is indebted to Fry’s interpretation of French Post-Impressionist painting. In 1913 both Grant and Bell joined Fry’s newly formed Omega Workshops at 33 Fitzroy Square which aimed to unite the decorative and fine arts together in a practical and sustainable manner.

Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) first became affiliated with the Bloomsbury Group during the First World War whilst working as a farm hand at Garsington Manor, home of Lady Ottoline Morrel (1873-1938). Lady Ottoline had sponsored Fry’s second Post-Impressionist exhibition in 1912 as she was a consistent supporter and patron of the Bloomsbury Group. It was during this time that Huxley met many of the great thinkers of the day, many of whom would have an enduring effect on his own writing. Among the regular visitors to Garsington were Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Clive Bell (1881-1961), John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), Lytton Strachey (1880-1932), Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, Vanessa Bell and of course Roger Fry.

In 1903 Fry co-founded the highly respected art journal The Burlington Magazine which he continued to write for and edit until 1919 at which point he asked the highly talented Huxley to take up the position as his replacement. Huxley graciously declined the offer on the grounds that he did not consider himself an authority on art and instead he took up a place on the writing staff at the literary magazine formed by James Silk Buckingham in 1828 entitled the Athenaeum. It is evident that Fry had an enormous respect for Huxley despite the fact that he was almost thirty years his junior. It is this admiration that led Fry to paint Huxley alongside Vanessa Bell in late 1931 during a shared sitting.

The present work, which was previously thought to be lost, was painted over a period of several months towards the end of 1931, the year in which Huxley wrote his seminal work Brave New World. The portrait itself is a fine example of Fry’s intimate and highly personal depictions of those whom were close to him. Fry represents Huxley as an assured and reflective intellectual much in the same manner as his portrait (executed the same year) of the notable French translator Charles Mauron (1899-1966) [Private Collection]. Fry shows Huxley as he commonly appeared in photographs and other paintings between the years 1931-34. His hair is swept back to reveal a broad forehead and his face is adorned with perfectly round spectacles. He is smartly dressed in an academic’s suit and clean white shirt complimented by a tightly knotted tie that angles slightly towards the viewer’s left.

It is this image of Huxley that holds a certain sense of familiarity and yet this particular work has remained ‘lost’ for many years. This is due, in part, to the portrait executed by Vanessa Bell which currently resides in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Aldous Huxley (c.1931) [NPG 6717] was painted in London at the same time Fry painted his portrait of the author. There are no other portraits by Fry of Huxley and thus the discovery of the present work and its similarity to Bell’s in the way in which Huxley is represented provide a significant amount of evidence to conclude that these two portraits were carried out as part of the same sitting. It was not unusual for sitters to pose for more than one artist simultaneously and the fact that Bell, Fry and Huxley were all well acquainted associates of the Bloomsbury Group makes this conclusion all the more assured.

Huxley was in London for a three-month period towards the end of 1931 to complete his editorial contribution to the published letters of his late friend D. H. Lawrence (185-1930). It was during this period that Bell and Fry painted him. Comparing both works provides an interesting layer of art historical interpretation to the sitting itself. In Bell’s work Huxley is shown in three-quarter length and angled slightly to the viewer’s right. He is shown sitting in a wooden chair with his arms folded and set against a background of red and complimentary green. Fry’s work is substantially smaller than Bell’s but restoration has shown that it was cut down and reworked by Fry at a later date. It is most likely that both artists would have painted only Huxley’s face in situ.

In Fry’s portrait the author is shown in bust-length and is angled slightly to the viewer’s left. Taking this into account it is possible to presume that Bell was therefore standing to the left and Fry to the right during the sitting. The palette is also similar in both being predominantly formed of green, brown and red hues. Bell depicts Huxley wearing an orange tie whereas in Fry’s work he is wearing one that is dark green. As both portraits were reworked at later dates this discrepancy in detail can most likely be attributed to artistic license and personal taste. It is certain that Fry had completed his portrait by 18th January 1932 as Clive Bell wrote in a letter to Frances Marshall (later Partridge, 1900-2004) that ‘[Fry] has now completed a […] portrait of Aldous which in horror surpasses anything he has ever painted before’. Although Bell may not have admired the portrait this work represents a key piece of Bloomsbury art history that has previously been unseen. This sitting culminated in two highly striking portraits of one of the most celebrated and innovative writers England has ever produced.

Two years after painting Huxley, Fry was appointed the eighth Slade Professor at the University of Cambridge a monumental achievement and public recognition that his knowledge of art historical theory and thought was unrivalled at the time. His legacy in the study of art history remains assured as does Huxley’s in the history of literary accomplishment. This portrait represents a unifying moment at which two great minds came together to aid the production of modern art. It is perhaps this aspect of Fry’s portrait that makes it so compelling.