DIRECTOR'S CHOICE: EDWIN MAXWELL FRY

August 3, 2025
DIRECTOR'S CHOICE: EDWIN MAXWELL FRY

Edwin Maxwell Fry
Forest with a Herd of Deer, 1977-78

Four panel Frieze
Oil paint on four boards
Each panel: 215 x 113cm; 84 3/4 x 44 1/2in
Total dimensions: : 215 x 452cm; 44 1/2 x 178in
Initialled and dated 77-8 lower left

 

Introduction

I never planned on becoming an art dealer. I loved the nine years that I spent at the Courtauld Institute completing my masters and doctorate and then teaching. If it had been possible to get tenure I’d probably still be there!

 

It was pure chance that I didn’t continue researching, teaching, writing and curating in an academic context. But I have been incredibly fortunate to continue the activities that I love all be it in different contexts.

 

When I started my own gallery in 1999 it felt natural to focus on the areas that I had studied and for which I was known. My PhD thesis and book, The Battle for Realism looked at the transformation of figurative art in Britain in the years following the Second World War and, despite detours, this remains the direction that the gallery has perused over the last twenty five years. 

 

The artists that I met and studied, among them Walter Sickert, David Bomberg, Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff, became the heart of the gallery’s exhibition programme and we started to represent several of the greatest painters of this generation who had not enjoyed the level of success that they deserved including Peter de Francia, Derrick Greaves, Nigel Henderson, Robert Medley, Edward Middleditch. In our early days it felt pioneering to be showing artists who were not in fashion. Early shows of sculpture and figurative painting such as Henry Moore and the Geometry of Fear and From Life turned a spotlight on these neglected areas and remain a foundation for the gallery. 

 

However, my scholarly approach has not always led to the best commercial choices. Frequently I’ve bought a picture that I would like to own myself or that I consider to be of historical importance without really thinking about who might actually buy it.  As an art historian, I love “museum art” - art of historical significance - but it’s not always what someone might actually want to hang in their home. It means that we have handled some incredible works, placed them in amazing international collections, and sold extensively to museums across the world. But it also means that we acquire works that I love without always having a buyer in mind.

 

I’m sure that some of the most commercially successful dealers are those that remove their personal feelings from their decisions on what to purchase: whether they love or appreciate a picture matters less than whether or not they can sell it. But for me it’s always been the opposite. Do I love the picture? Is it something that I would want to own? I have always been excited, first and foremost by the artwork, then sought to learn more about it, and then finally to place it with a museum or a private collector.

 

Of course historical importance does not always mean commercial success. This is something that I learnt early on in my very first job in the art world as gallery administrator at the Saatchi collection during its great days at Boundary Road. I was obsessed by Leon Kossoff’s work and was amazed that a private collector could own so many of Leon’s best large-scale works. I learnt that most of Leon’s collectors had the space and budgets for smaller more domestic works meaning that many of his most important large-scale museum pieces had remained unsold. However, whilst receiving this practical lesson, I’ve always been too excited by the artworks themselves to really heed this advice.

 

I’ve also never looked for the easiest route or the most fashionable or supposedly most commercial one. I’ve always been led by my own gut feeling and this has often led me to exhibit exhilarating but neglected artists before they were more universally validated.

 

I’ve always hoped that my gallery is a place to find the greatest works by the greatest artists but also that it is a place of discovery, for collectors as well as for myself, a place to find the special but less familiar.

 

So to start this series, I’ve selected a recent discovery and a prime example of following my heart as well as my head.  The chance to own the largest and most important painting by one of the greatest modernist architects of the twentieth century, Edwin Maxwell Fry, was simply too good to resist. The fact that Maxwell Fry is better known as an architect than a painter makes the chance to handle this work even more motivating for me.

 

Personally, it’s another chance for me to study and learn whilst publicly it’s another incredible opportunity for a museum or private collector to purchase something truly special.

 

Once more, I’m excited to draw attention to an important but unfamiliar work that deserves greater recognition and celebration.  And, once again, my enthusiasm for a picture has made me take a leap into the unknown. It remains to be seen who will purchase a painting of this size, however impressive!

 

Dr James Hyman

 

JAMES HYMAN GALLERY

 

The Painting

Edwin Maxwell Fry's Forest with a Herd of Deer (1977-78) is a panoramic frieze made up of four vertical panels.  Across the painting the palette is predominatly the greens and earth tones of nature, from the grasses and tree trunks to the deer.  The soft forms of the grasses and deer provide a contrast with the structure provided by the repeating forms of the tree trunks whose thin forms and wintry lack of foliage emphasise their verticality.  

 

Art Historical References

The composition with its extended horizontal format and frieze of silver birch trees contains strong echoes of the Ashmolean's most famous painting, Paulo Ucello's celebrated The Hunt in the Forest (c.1470).

 

 
 
Maxwell Fry's use of four extended vertical panels also suggests a non-Western source, something that would be very much in keeping with his internationalism as an architect.  Each panel echoes the extended form of a Chinese or Japanese scroll and in particular there are echoes that can be found in another celebrated work in a British collection, Wen Zhengming's Wintry Trees (1543), which was acquired by the British Museum in 1965. 
This work by one of the greatest artists of the Ming dynasty's Wu School, similalrly combines tall trees with an extended format to empahsise verticality. 
 
Architect and Painter
Architect as well as artist, Maxwell Fry was a pioneer of mid-century modernism and the form of the frieze has a direct relationship to his architecture. As an architect, Maxwell Fry worked extensively across the world and became famed for his "tropical modernism". This form of architecture in which the rigours of international modernism are combined with a sensitivitiy to local styles, saw Maxwell Fry work closely with local experts to create pioneering buildings. It was the subject of a major recent exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. 
 
Along with his wife Jane Drew, Maxwell Fry ran an important architecture practice, winning major commissions before and after World War II. They worked closely together and travelled extensively internationally and, perhaps most famously, in the 1950s collaborated with Le Corbusier on the masterplan and buildings for the new capital city of Punjab at Chandigarh, India. Maxwell Fry's buildings included the government press building (1953), which is credited as being the first building in India to have a glass facade. 
 
 
First introduced to Le Corbusier's architectural principles by Canadian designer Wells Coates, Maxwell Fry incorporated many of his ideas into his own designs, including his 'five points' of architecture.

Pilotis and Trees
One of Le Corbusier's dictums was the inclusion of pilotis (thin columns) into the structural support and composition of a building. An emphasis on the verticality of multiple columns also became a feature of Maxwell Fry's work, as with Capel Crallo, Coychurch Crematorium, Mid-Glamorgan, and has a counterpart in the thin vertical tree trunks in the frieze.
 
 
Perhaps closer still to the structure of the frieze is the Sultan Bello dining hall, University College, Ibadan, Nigeria, which marries thin colums with a dome above them in ways that echoes the trees and curved view of sky in the frieze.
 
Provenance
The painting comes from the family of the celebrated Iranian film-maker, Ebrahim Golestan (1922-2023) and only came on to the art market for the first time following his recent death. 
 
Golestan was friends with Maxwell Fry from whom he commissioned the painting.  The four panel frieze hung at Wykehurst Park House, West Sussex his home until he died, just short of his 101st birthday. It's rich, woody colours and curve of the sky reading symmetrically with the interior with its wooden floor and ceiling. 
 
 
An Iranian film maker and writer, Golestan was closely associated with the poet Forough Forrokhzad, 1934-1967. He produced her acclaimed film The House is Black in 1963, the same year that he made the Iranian classic Brick and Mirror. The last film he made in Iran was Ghost Valley's Treasure Mysteries in 1974. 
 
It's not known whether the two men met in Iran in the 1950s or whether they became aquanited following Golestan's move to England, but Golestan may have known of Fry from the architect's work on the planning of the Gach Saran New Town in 1959. 
 
For further details and to request the price please email james@jameshymangallery.com

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James Hyman

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