Fry Gallery

The Fry Public Art Gallery was opened in 1987 and houses an impressive number of paintings, prints, illustrations and wallpaper designs by artists of the 20th century and the present who have connections with the area immediately around Great Bardfield, Essex. The gallery, which houses nearly 1000 works of art by artists such as Edward Bawden, who, with his friend Eric Ravilious, discovered Bardfield a year before the arrival of John Aldridge and dominated the scene for almost four decades. Aldridge lived in the village for half a century before he died in 1983.

The Gallery has also acquired work by Tirzah Garwood, Michael Rothenstein, Duffy Ayers, Kenneth Rowntree, George Chapman, Richard Bawden, Walter Hoyle, Keith Vaughan, Robert Colquhoun, Robert MacBryde, John Norris Wood, Michael Ayrton, John Bolam and Olga Lehmann, all of whom are or were associated with Saffron Walden and its environs. The Gallery was designed to house the collection of Francis Gibson, a local businessman who died in 1859, and the building passed by descent to the Fry family, who lease it to the Fry Art Gallery Society. The Gallery also houses a collection of work by Lewis George Fry (1860-1933), who was Gibson's grandson and a landscape painter of repute. His oils and watercolours are normally exhibited annually between the spring and autumn exhibitions, along with other works by his nephew Roger Fry (1866-1934) and his grandson Anthony Fry.

During the 1970's and 1980's there was a Fry Gallery in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, owned and run by art dealer Cyril Fry (1918-2010). To my knowledge, he was not related to the Saffron Walden gallery.

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