Background
Roger Fry was born on December 14, 1866, in St Pancras, London, United Kingdom, into a wealthy Quaker family. He was the son of Right Honourable Sir Edward Fry.
Clifton College
King’s College, Cambridge
Roger Fry was born on December 14, 1866, in St Pancras, London, United Kingdom, into a wealthy Quaker family. He was the son of Right Honourable Sir Edward Fry.
Fry was educated at Clifton College. He also studied at King’s College in Cambridge, where he took a first in the Natural Science ‘tripos.’
Much to his family’s regret, Roger Fry decided after university to pursue an artistic career rather than continue his scientific studies. In 1891 Fry went to Italy and then Paris, to study painting. He began to lecture on art, and became a critic and author. He made his debut in art criticism in 1893 with a review of George Moore’s book "Modern Art for the Cambridge Review." Then in 1894 he began lecturing on Italian art for the Cambridge Extension Movement (classes for working people).
Roger's first book on Giovanni Bellini, was published in 1899. He regularly contributed articles and criticism to the magazines Monthly Review and The Athenaeum, and in 1903 he was involved in the founding of Burlington Magazine, acting as joint editor between 1909 - 1918, and making it into one of the most important art magazines in Britain. From 1905 to 1910, he was the Curator of Paintings for the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
He first met the artists Clive Bell and Vanessa Bell in 1910, when they invited him to lecture at Vanessa’s Friday Club. This was the artistic equivalent of her brother Thoby’s literary soirees held on Thursday evenings. He subsequently became a regular member of the Bloomsbury Group, and Virginia Woolf later wrote his biography. His affair with her sister Vanessa Bell began in 1911 when he accompanied the Bells on a holiday to Turkey. It ended when she transferred her affections to Duncan Grant in 1913.
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 in 1927, and Matisse in 1930. 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. This remained active until 1919.
Fry re-edited and updated a collection of his best articles and writings to produce his best known book, "Vision and Design" which was published in 1920. As well as Western art, the book examined the use of form and aesthetics in ethnic art from Africa, America and Asia. It was a great success, reinforcing his position as England’s leading critic and it is still recognised as an extremely influential work in the development of modernist theory.
In 1933 Fry was offered the post of Slade Professor at Cambridge and began a series of lectures on the nature of art history that he was never to complete. The text for the lectures was published after his death in 1939 as "Last Lectures." Fry died on September 9, 1934 following a fall at his London home. His ashes were placed in the vault of Kings College Chapel, Cambridge, in a casket decorated by Vanessa Bell.
Still Life with T'ang Horse
Still Life with Coffee Pot
River with Poplars
Bridge over the Allier
Flowers
Venice
Orchard, Woman Seated in a Garden
Spring
A Room (in the Second Post-Impressionist)
Bassano
Essay in Abstract Design
Carpentras, Provence
Beaumes
Nina Hamnett
View on the Cote d'Azur, Menton
Venice
Landscape with Shepherd, near Villa Madama, Rome
Peonies and Poppies
Portrait of Edith Sitwell
In his ideas, Fry emphasised the importance of ‘form’ over ‘content’: that is, how a work looks, rather than what it is about. He thought that artists should use colour and arrangement of forms rather than the subject to express their ideas and feelings, and that works of art should not be judged by how accurately they represent reality.
He became a regular member of the Bloomsbury Group, and Virginia Woolf later wrote his biography. He was a member of the Conversazione Society, alongside freethinking men who would shape the foundation of his interest in the arts, including John McTaggart and Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson.
Physical Characteristics: His success as a public speaker depended partly on his mellifluous voice: George Bernard Shaw said it was one of only two he knew that were worth listening to for their own sake — the other was that of the actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson.
Quotes from others about the person
In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry.
Roger married the artist Helen Coombe in 1896, but although his career as an artist and critic was a success, his personal life was troubled. His wife suffered from mental illness and had to be committed to an institution, where she stayed until her death in 1937. Fry was left to look after their children Pamela and Julian.
In his personal life, it was not until 1924 after several short lived relationships (including affairs with Nina Hamnett, one of the Omega artists; and Josette Coatmellec, which ended tragically with her suicide), that he found happiness with Helen Anrep. Twenty years his junior, she left her husband and became a great support to Fry in his career, and lived with him until his death.