Roger Eliot Fry Papers - Archives West (original) (raw)

Overview of the Collection

Creator

Fry, Roger Eliot

Title

Roger Eliot Fry Papers

Dates

1909-1936 (inclusive)

19091936

Quantity

1 container., (.25 linear feet of shelf space.), (12 items.)

Collection Number

Cage 540

Summary

Legal documents concerning Fry's various trust accounts and personal property holdings. Four of the documents are signed by Leonard Woolf, a trustee of Fry's estate.

Repository

Washington State University Libraries' Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections
Terrell Library Suite 12
Pullman, WA
99164-5610
Telephone: 509-335-6691
mascref@wsu.edu

Access Restrictions

This collection is open for research use.

Languages

English

Sponsor

Funding for encoding this finding aid was provided through a grant awarded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Biographical NoteReturn to Top

Roger Eliot Fry, art critic and artist, was born in London December 14, 1866. He studied science at King's College, Cambridge from 1885 to 1888 and during those years he also began to paint and to study the history of Italian painting. In 1891 he made his first trip to Italy and in 1894 he began to lecture, with great success, on the Italian Renaissance. From 1900 onwards he wrote articles and reviewed exhibitions for Athenaeum, The Monthly Review and The Burlington Magazine. He quickly earned a considerable reputation as an art scholar and expert, and in 1905 he became director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York City, a position he held until 1910. In that year, Fry arranged the first English exhibition of post-impressionist painting at the Grafton Galleries, and became a recognized advocate of modern painting. He was also an influential force in the Bloomsbury group. In 1913 he founded the Omega Workshops which made furniture, pottery, fabrics and other articles in an avant-garde style. The workshops, which closed in 1919, employed such Bloomsbury artists as Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, among others.

After World War I Fry focused on developing his aesthetic ideas. Between 1927 and 1934 he gave a series of highly successful lectures at the Queen's Hall in London which were sponsored by the National Art Collections Fund. He published numerous articles and books on art criticism and theory, among them Transformations and Vision and Design. In 1933 he became Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge. Although Fry's paintings, chiefly landscapes, were exhibited at the New English Art Club and the Alpine Club Gallery, it was as an art critic that Fry achieved greatest importance. He died September 9, 1934 in London.

Content DescriptionReturn to Top

The papers of Roger Eliot Fry consist of legal documents which define and settle Fry's various trust accounts and personal property holdings. Four of the documents are signed by Leonard Woolf who was a trustee of Fry's estate.

Use of the CollectionReturn to Top

Preferred Citation

[Item Description]. Cage 540, Roger Eliot Fry Papers. Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.

Administrative InformationReturn to Top

Acquisition Information

The papers of Roger Eliot Fry, 1866-1934, were purchased from a Massachusetts bookseller in 1986 (86-20).