Hanover Gallery

Erica Brausen's name is synonymous with the Hanover Gallery. Born in 1908 in Düsseldorf, Germany, she left with the rise of Nazism in the early 1930's and travelled to Paris. Brausen left France in 1935 and was soon heavily involved in fighting with the anti-Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Operating under the code name of Beryl, she covertly helped her many Jewish and socialist friends escape the naval blockades, and she managed to slip away on a fishing boat, arriving in England penniless as World War II broke out. Fortunately, a sympathetic homosexual artist friend married her to give her British status. Her first real employment in England was to start in the mid-1940's working at the established Redfern Gallery, in London's West End. Soon after, in 1946, she was introduced to Arthur Jeffress, a millionaire collector who agreed to back Brausen in opening her own gallery in St. George's Street off Hanover Square, thus the Hanover Gallery was born.

During the following quarter-century, the Hanover became one of the most diverse and interesting galleries in Europe. In 1949, the gallery gave Francis Bacon his first solo exhibition, and for nearly a decade, they had a fine working relationship. In 1958, following a disagreement, Bacon left to join the Marlborough Gallery, although they never really patched up their argument. However, when Bacon was some years later told of Brausen's illness, he is reputed to have sent her a cheque for more than £100,000. The gallery closed in 1973, but Brausen, having opened a gallery in Zurich with Gimpel Fils, continued to deal from her Swiss base as well as from her London home. She died in 1992. Over the years, Erica Brausen had working relations with 20th-century iconic artists including Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Fred McWilliam, Henry Moore, William Scott, Nano Reid, Eileen Agar, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Man Ray and Rene Magritte.

There existed between c. 1880 and c. 1904 a Hanover Gallery at 47 New Bond Street, London, which was the early exhibition home of both the Society of Women Painters and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers. This Hanover Gallery was not in any way related to the above mentioned gallery.