Grafton Galleries

Often referred to erroneously as the Grafton Gallery it appears to have had a Liverpool address as early as 1873 but as yet this has to be confirmed.

It had two London addresses the first at 8, Grafton Street, Mayfair and the 2nd from about 1892 in Bond Street in the heart of the West End. Numerous exhibiting societies used the premises: these included the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society, the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, the Ridley Art Club, Society of Miniaturists, ISSPG and the WIAC. In 1905 the Parisian dealer Paul Durand-Ruel showed the first substantial exhibition of the Impressionist paintings seen in London. This show achieved little publicity and it was not until 1910 that Roger Fry mounted the first of his two Post-Impressionist exhibitions introducing a shocked public to Cézanne, Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh. Two years later in 1912, rubbing salt into a still open wound, he attempted to convert them to Matisse and Picasso. This notoriety achieved unrivalled publicity for the Grafton. During the period 1916-20 the Gallery hosted exhibitions mounted by the Allied Artists' Association.

Individual artists who staged solo exhibitions and or who appeared in group shows there included Frank Brangwyn, Christopher Nevinson, Ben Nicholson, Glyn Philpot, Frank Salisbury, John Singer Sargent, William Bruce Ellis Ranken, William Orpen, John Lavery, James Jebusa Shannon, and Fiddes Watts.

The last exhibition appears to have been in 1930. The building then became a jazz club and cabaret venue.