The Charleston museum in Firle, East Sussex, will mount a major solo exhibition of paintings by Roger Fry (1866-1934) from 15 November 2025 to 15 March 2026. Fry, a central figure in the Bloomsbury Group, was a polymath who introduced Post-Impressionists like Cézanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin to British and American audiences, co-founded the Omega Workshops and the Burlington Magazine, taught at Cambridge, and curated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show brings together nearly 80 works, over 60 from private collections, including portraits of friends like E.M. Forster and Vanessa Bell, and landscapes that reveal his experimental range from Gauguin-esque outlines to Cubism.
This exhibition matters because it corrects a long-standing oversight: despite Fry's immense influence as a critic and tastemaker, his own painting has been largely neglected. By reuniting works that have not been seen together for decades—some not exhibited since his first solo show—the show aims to re-establish Fry as a significant artist in his own right, not merely the intellectual engine of Bloomsbury. It also deepens understanding of the group's collaborative creative practice, as many works were painted alongside Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant during shared travels.