The New Gallery

The New Gallery began life in 1888 at 121 Regent Street, close to Piccadilly Circus. Built on the site of an old fruit market, the West and North Galleries on the ground floor displayed larger oil paintings, and the first-floors balcony around the Central Hall displayed smaller works in oils, watercolours, etchings and drawings and sculpture was displayed in the Central Hall. The Gallery was the brain-child of Joseph William Comyns Carr, drama critic and playwright and Charles Edward Hallé, himself an artist and the son the founder of the Hallé Orchestra. Comyns Carr and Hallé had been co-directors of the Grosvenor Gallery but had resigned from the troubled gallery the previous year. The New Gallery Directors, both great champions of the Pre-Raphaelite and the Aesthetic Movement encouraged their friends Edward Burne-Jones, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, William Holman Hunt, George Frederic Watts and Lord Leighton to contribute not only to the gala opening but to show regularly at the new venue. Towards the end of its first year in October 1888 the Gallery hosted the first exhibition of industrial and applied arts by the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society under the direction of its founding president, illustrator and designer Walter Crane. It was the first such show in London since the Grosvenor Gallery's Winter Exhibition of 1881. The Gallery was also the venue for a major Burne-Jones retrospective in 1892–93 and a memorial exhibition of his works in 1898.

However the Gallery’s popularity began to wane towards the end of the first decade of the 20th century and Comyns Carr resigned in 1908 and in 1910 the building became the New Gallery Restaurant, again changing its use in 1913 when it became a cinema. The building has led a chequered existence and during the mid-1950’s until the 1990’s it became a Seventh Day Adventist church. It remained unused until 2006 when the furniture store Habitat occupied it before giving up the lease in 2011. At the time of writing it is believed that it will form part of the clothing empire of Burberry. This Gallery should not be confused with an identically named gallery based in Shandwick Place, Glasgow.

Number of Artists referenced: 810