Selected Exhibitions

ARTIST AND MODEL | ARTIST AS MODEL

6 - 18 May 2025 ARTIST AND MODEL | ARTIST AS MODEL Important Photographs from Gustave Le Gray to Zanele Muholi This exhibition presents one of the central themes of photography from its earliest days to the present and is divided into three sections: portraits of notable artists, the model as a subject, and forms... Read more

Celebrating 25 Years of James Hyman Gallery

27 Oct - 20 Dec 2024 27th October 2024 marks twenty five years since the founding of James Hyman Fine Art in 1999. To mark this anniversary we are staging a special online exhibition. Based in St James’s and Mayfair for most of this time, the gallery has specialised in Twentieth Century British Art with a... Read more

Derrick Greaves. From Shangri La to the Walled Garden

A 95th Birthday Celebration 17 Jun - 26 Aug 2022 From Shangri-La to the Walled Garden includes paintings, watercolours and collages made during the last 15 years. The climax is a group of large-scale paintings made over the last two years that are an exhilarating assertion of the extraordinary inventive energy of this major figure in British Art. James Hyman... Read more

Telling Stories

Picture Post and its Legacy 29 Mar - 10 Jun 2022 The exhibition presents some of the key photographers of Picture Post magazine as well as a curated selection of some later British photographers who built on this storytelling or documentary tradition. Visit The Viewing Room The exhibition includes loans as well as works for sale. VIEW WORKS Read more

Derrick Greaves. Blossom

16 May - 16 Jul 2020 It is April 10th. Early morning. Time for our daily walk. We have been in quarantine after a family member caught the coronavirus and depressed after a young friend died of the virus. But now we are out again. Out in the garden and out on our neighbouring streets. The... Read more

Andre Kertesz - Linda McCartney

1 - 31 May 2019 Andre Kertesz was one of the greatest photographers in the history of the medium and a photographer greatly admired by Linda McCartney. Famed for his modernist photographs made in Paris in the 1920s and then in New York, Kertesz's works are tightly structured meditations on life in the modern metropolis.... Read more

The Human Abstract

Tony Bevan, Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan, Dennis Creffield, Derrick Greaves, Zhang Huan, Andre Kertesz, Henry Moore, Andy Warhol 10 Feb - 4 Mar 2016 Building on this theme, a central aspect is inspired by Honore de Balzac's great short story, The Unknown Masterpiece (1831). Rather than seeing the story as a message about abstraction, The Human Abstract, seeks to reinsert the figurative aspect. In Balzac's tale, after ten years of labour, Frenhofer unveils his... Read more

Andre Kertesz in Europe

13 May - 13 Jun 2015 The exhibition - the first of its kind to focus on Kertesz's European work along - spans the photographer's whole career and features well-known images as well as several unknown photographs which have never before been exhibited or published. Born in Hungary in 1894, Kertesz was one of the most... Read more

The Male Gaze

Bill Brandt, Jacob Epstein, Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Matthew Smith, Walter Sickert, Homer Sykes and Keith Vaughan 21 May - 7 Jul 2014 The artists include: Bill Brandt, Jacob Epstein, Lucian Freud, Henry Moore, Matthew Smith, Walter Sickert, Homer Sykes, and Keith Vaughan. Read more

Another Country

Vintage Photographs of British Life by Tony Ray-Jones 11 Sep - 7 Nov 2013 Tony Ray-Jones had a short life. He died in 1972 aged just thirty. But the pictures that he left behind are some of the most powerful British photographs of the twentieth century. His work of the late 1960s and early 1970s documents English culture and identity and brilliantly captures this... Read more

Country Matters

British Photographs by Bert Hardy, Roger Mayne, Tony Ray-Jones, Colin Jones, Chris Killip, Homer Sykes, Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Martin Parr, Mark Power, Anna Fox, Ken Grant 11 Sep - 7 Nov 2013 The exhibition explores constructions of Englishness, from eccentric to conformist, aristocrat to working class, northern and southern, black and white, old and young, work and leisure, rural and urban. Covering a spectrum from playful and quirky to dark and serious, from compassionate and empathic to detached and even satirical, these... Read more

Derrick Greaves. All Blues

7 Jun - 5 Jul 2013 Last summer we staged an exhibition of recent paintings entitled Derrick Greaves. Milestones that celebrated the artist's 85th birthday and we are delighted once more to be marking Derrick Greaves's birthday in June with a vibrant new exhibition. In the decade since our first exhibition of Derrick Greaves, he has... Read more

From Sermons in Stones to Monsters of Modernity

9 - 26 May 2012 The exhibition title references the religious significance of the portal programmes of Gothic cathedrals with their multiple biblical scenes as well as the gargoyles of Notre Dame that were the mid-nineteenth century invention of Viollet-le-Duc. The exhibition traces the ways in which the great Gothic churches and cathedrals of France... Read more

Peter de Francia. An Intimate View

15 Mar - 5 May 2012 What unites many decades of drawing and painting is de Francia's fascination with people and the connections between them. This may often focus on power and its abuse, but de Francia also celebrates moments of warmth and affection. Though he is often associated with, and acclaimed for, his biting socio-political... Read more

From Ivon Hitchens to the Kitchen-Sink. Re-examining the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale (1956)

26 Jan - 10 Mar 2012 The British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 1956 is today chiefly remembered for its presentation of the kitchen-sink painters - John Bratby, Derrick Greaves, Edward Middleditch and Jack Smith. Certainly, it was a high point in their careers, but the Pavilion also included a gallery of paintings by Ivon... Read more

Basil Beattie. Onward and Upward

Twenty Five Years of Work (1986-2011) 16 Nov 2011 - 21 Jan 2012 Building from his early engagement with Abstract Expressionism, in recent decades Beattie has increasingly adopted a system of pictographic signs; doorways, stairways, archways, ziggurats, corners and long tunnels. Despite their allusions to architectural spaces, Beattie sees these forms more as references to psychological states. Any illusion of space is also... Read more

Dennis Creffield. Jerusalem

7 Sep - 9 Oct 2011 In the extensively illustrated publication that accompanies the exhibition, James Hyman explains the origins of these pictures: 'In May 2007, I paid a visit to Dennis Creffield's studio in Brighton and as we talked over lunch the idea for an exhibition grew. I proposed a commission based on Jerusalem/William Blake... Read more

Picasso. At Work and Play

24 Jun - 26 Aug 2011 The exhibition explores Picasso's private and public worlds, from the intense concentration of the studio to the release offered by friends. A select presentation of works span the artist's whole career, from his charming early Blue and Rose period etchings of circus performers to his highly charged last works, which... Read more

Beyond the Human Clay

5 May - 18 Jun 2011 In 1976 the great figurative painter and polemicist R.B. Kitaj organized a group exhibition for the Arts Council of Great Britain entitled The Human Clay. To mark the 35th anniversary of Kitaj's seminal exhibition and to celebrate a decade of exhibitions focused on Twentieth Century British figurative art at James... Read more

From Talbot to Fox

150 Years of British Social Photography 16 - 20 Mar 2011 In order to build on this earlier New York exhibition, James Hyman Photography's AIPAD exhibition From Talbot to Fox broadens the range of photographers shown in order to provide a wider historical and geographical context. Starting with the earliest photographers the exhibition explores the importance of class and identifies themes... Read more

Ben Spiers. Seamless

10 Feb - 5 Mar 2011 Ben Spiers's hyper-realist paintings are fictions based on combining a sophisticated array of Western and non-Western sources: a Japanese woodcut, Roman portrait bust or the pages of Vogue may all inform his re-imagined portraits. The paintings of Ben Spiers inhabit a world in which the smooth aesthetic of Photoshop replaces... Read more

Peter de Francia Paintings

A 90th Birthday Retrospective 6 Jan - 5 Feb 2011 This is the first large-scale exhibition of de Francia's work since his solo show at Tate Britain in 2006; The Ship of Fools: Peter de Francia in Focus at Pallant House in 2007-08, and his drawing retrospective, Modern Myths , which toured the United States in 2008. The inclusion in... Read more

Colin Self. One Thousand Sketches

12 Nov - 18 Dec 2010 One of Britain's greatest Pop artists, Colin Self is especially acclaimed for his drawings, as Richard Hamilton's praise makes clear: 'He's the best draughtsman in England since William Blake; he uses the pencil in such an individual way.' (Richard Hamilton). Widely respected by his peers (among them Michael Andrews, Frank... Read more

La Nouvelle Vague

Iconic New Wave Photographs by Raymond Cauchetier 14 Jul - 3 Sep 2010 Staged on the 50th anniversary of Jean Luc Godard's A Bout de Souffle (1960),this exhibition presents photographs capturing the essence of the French Nouvelle Vague movement, many of which are being exhibited for the first time. Coinciding with Raymond Cauchetier's 90th Birthday, this year, these iconic photographs are available for... Read more

Modernist Realism

The School of London from Andrews to O'Donoghue 25 Feb - 1 May 2010 James Hyman Gallery is pleased to present Modernist Realism an exhibition that focuses on artists who have made London their base and are often associated with the School of London. This exhibition and the simultaneous photography show, London Calling , seek to approach the School of London afresh to suggest... Read more

Michael Andrews. Selected Watercolours and Drawings from the Artist's Estate

1 - 22 Dec 2009 Read more

Tony Bevan. Construct

26 Nov - 22 Dec 2009 From Bevan's earliest days, interiors have coexisted with portraits and figures, and his work has increasingly divided into interiors with corridors, rafters and studio furniture amd figures and portraits. The fluidity of Bevan's pictorial language allows the artist to create a fascinating interplay betwen these bodies of work. Heads are... Read more

Museum Quality

The Colony Room Mural and Other Important Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture 10 Jun - 22 Aug 2009 In celebration we have made a selection of acknowledged masterpieces and little-known rarities from the Modern British inventory of James Hyman Fine Art. We will be exhibiting for the first time, an icon of British cultural history, Michael Andrews's huge canvas, The Colony Room Mural (1958), which was installed at... Read more

William Townsend Centenary

Selected Paintings from the Artist's Estate 20 Feb 2009 Read more

Bridget Riley. Selected Prints

29 Jan - 7 Mar 2009 Read more

Lucian Freud. Works on Paper

29 Jan - 7 Mar 2009 Read more

Garry Fabian Miller. Time Passage

20 Nov 2008 - 24 Jan 2009 The exhibition: Garry Fabian Miller. Time Passage presents for the first time since the 1970s, vintage prints of Fabian Miller's famous Sea Horizon series, including photographs never previously exhibited or reproduced. Also included are plant studies, such as the multi-part work Honesty , made in 1985 when the artist gave... Read more

Francis Bacon. Prints

5 Sep - 4 Oct 2008 Read more

Violence and Sensation. Francis Bacon and the Remaking of Appearance

5 Sep - 4 Oct 2008 James Hyman says: As this exhibition demonstrates, Bacon's legacy was not stylistic so much as conceptual: an encouragement to take risks, an art of extremes, a heightened sense of mortality.Hyman Gallery will also be presenting a series of rarely seen prints by Francis Bacon. As with Bacon, all the artists... Read more

Linda McCartney. Photographs

25 Apr - 19 Jun 2008 Paul McCartney says : An exhibition presenting the range of Linda's photographic work is long overdue, so I'm obviously pleased that this show is happening. James Hyman, my daughter Mary, and I have worked on it now for three years, and the result is a sensitive selection of works that... Read more

Hughie O'Donoghue. The Geometry of Paths

7 Mar - 19 Apr 2008 The painter Van Gogh on the road to Tarascon and a RAF Navigator on route to bomb the city of Cologne in 1944, these two seemingly unrelated and disparate events become connected in Hughie O'Donoghue's new exhibition The Geometry of Paths. A major new painting, The Yellow Man, re imagines... Read more

Alan Davie. The Shaman's Enigma

24 Jan - 1 Mar 2008 One of the leading British Modern Artists, Alan Davie, now in his eighty-eighth year, initially gained his reputation as one of the most important European Abstract Expressionists, a counterpart to Jackson Pollock in America. What both shared was an interest in Jungian archetypes as well as a belief in the... Read more

Edward Middleditch. Sea and Sky

23 Jan - 1 Mar 2008 One of the leading Modern British Artists of the last fifty years, Edward Middleditch first gained prominence in the mid 1950s as a `kitchen-sink' painter, along with John Bratby, Derrick Greaves and Jack Smith. Although celebrated for their bold, matter of fact presentation of prosaic subjects that were often urban... Read more

A Tribute to Sir Colin St John Wilson

21 Nov - 1 Dec 2007 James Hyman is proud to present a personal tribute to Sir Colin St John Wilson, one of Britain's greatest architects and art collectors of the last half-century. The exhibition follows the death of Colin St John Wilson in May this year and coincides with the 10th anniversary of the opening... Read more

The Flower of Life

19 Sep - 27 Oct 2007 In celebration of the opening of the new gallery, James Hyman is proud to present a specially curated exhibition of important artworks that explore the relationship between Art, Love and Nature. Appropriately, for this first exhibition, the theme is transformation, specifically the transforming power of love as an inspiration for... Read more

Derrick Greaves. From Kitchen Sink to Shangri-La

1 - 22 Jun 2007 Part I Derrick Greaves The Early Work 1945 -1965 Including major oil paintings, as well as drawings, from the artist's celebrated 'kitchen-sink' period. In addition to works loaned from Private Collections, a number of pictures will be for sale. Part II Derrick Greaves The Middle Years 1965 - 1985 Including... Read more

Edward Middleditch. Water and Light

20 Sep - 3 Nov 2006 In Edward Middleditch's Summer Landscape (1969) and its companion Garden Landscape (1969) a rhythmic row of trees stretches endlessly across the picture plane and a series of flowers expands before our gaze. The effect is at once highly ordered, exquisitely patterned and serenely classical. It is also highly decorative and... Read more

Building Sites

Auerbach, Bevan, Chamberlain, Johnson 2 Aug - 15 Sep 2006 Frank Auerbach's depiction of a London building site consists of mounds of paint that are an equivalent to the earth itself. The scaffolding provides a powerful structure but man and machine are subsumed by the sheer mess of the excavation and the scale of the construction. Building work may come... Read more

Peter de Francia. Portraits

27 Jun - 28 Jul 2006 One of the most important realist artists of the last half century, de Francia's portraits, mainly produced in the 1950s and 1960s, testify to the fertile intellectual and cultural milieu of the period. Presenting a wide range of sitters including writers, critics, artists and musicians, as well as leading academics,... Read more

Pop Classical

Derrick Greaves Paintings from the 1970s 29 Mar - 28 Apr 2006 'They all avoid the handmade look, the expressive brushstroke. They all compose with thickish painted lines, which both delineate forms and strike up a strong rhythmIn the too little known recent work of Derrick Greaves the line is often a pale one, dividing two darker areas like the swap of... Read more

Robert Medley. A Centenary Tribute

3 Nov 2005 - 27 Jan 2006 However, despite powerful supporters, in his lifetime Medley was diffident about fame and since his death a decade ago his work has tended to fall from view. This makes the present exhibition an opportune chance to reassess a major artist. Marking the centenary of the birth of Robert Medley who... Read more

Fifty Years of British Landscape Painting

4 Aug - 23 Sep 2005 Works by eight artists provide highly personal and distinctly different responses to the British landscape. The exhibition travels to all corners of the British Isles - north, east, south and west - from Andrews in Scotland, Greaves in Norfolk, Auerbach in London, Hitchens in Sussex, Hilton and Frost in Cornwall... Read more

Michael Andrews Landscapes

6 Jun - 29 Jul 2005 Many of these works have not previously been exhibited. Michael Andrews (1929 -95), who died ten years ago this July, was one of the greatest British painters of the twentieth century. He was also one of the least prolific artists, making this exhibition a rare opportunity to see works, many... Read more

Edward Burra. Real and Surreal

28 Apr - 27 May 2005 Several of the works will be exhibited for the first time and suggest not only Burra's range but also his international standing. One of the most individual of twentieth century British artists, Burra was also one of the most widely traveled, producing work that was both highly idiosyncratic and engaged... Read more

Peter de Francia. After the Bombing

11 Mar - 15 Apr 2005 Read more

William Turnbull. Heads and Figures. 1953-56

23 Sep - 12 Nov 2004 PRESS RELEASE William Turnbull. Heads and Figures. 1953-56 23 September – 12 November 2004 'To develop one's own language you have to go back to the essentials, start with something elementary such as line, then look at space, then at volume. Start from the material, then go to the image,... Read more

The Challenge of Post War Painting

3 Jun - 4 Sep 2004 Continuing our ongoing series of curated exhibitions devoted to the greatest British artists of the twentieth century, James Hyman Gallery are delighted to be holding a major exhibition addressing one of the most exciting periods in twentieth century British art history, the dynamic years of change after the Second World... Read more

Bert Hardy. The Elephant and the Castle

Vintage Photographs of London Life in the 1940s 16 Apr - 29 May 2004 Following recent exhibitions of paintings, drawings, sculpture and prints by Britain's leading artists of the twentieth century, James Hyman Gallery is pleased to present a very rare group of vintage photographs by one of Britain's most important photographers, Bert Hardy. As chief photographer for Picture Post magazine in the 1940s... Read more

Lewis Chamberlain. Recent Paintings and Drawings

26 Feb - 10 Apr 2004 Read more

Sacred and Profane

Edward Burra, Cecil Collins, Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill 5 Dec 2003 - 1 Jan 2004 At the heart of the show is Cecil Collins' powerful early masterpiece, God has flown from this World - an apocalyptic scene in which fires burn across the world - that suggests the legacy of the visionary epics of William Blake. Complementing this dramatic vision of the future is Edward... Read more

Alan Davie. Recent Paintings and Gouaches

22 Oct - 11 Nov 2003 Now in his eighty-forth year, Davie continues to produce paintings of startling originality, vitality and daring. Combining imagery derived from different world cultures with a love of music and language, Davie's paintings are a complex yet joyous celebration of creativity that combine the expressive freedom of abstraction with a wealth... Read more

From Life. Radical figurative art from Sickert to Bevan

Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Tony Bevan, David Bomberg, William Coldstream, Leon Kossoff, Walter Sickert, Euan Uglow 10 Sep - 18 Oct 2003 A spine runs through some of the most radical figurative art in Britain of the twentieth century. Its backbone is drawing and its fibre art school teaching, yet it is the distinct personalities of each artist that provide the meat. From Walter Sickert to Tony Bevan, what impresses one most... Read more

Peter Doig. Painter as Printmaker

14 May - 15 Jun 2003 In Peter Doig: painter as printmaker James Hyman Gallery presents over fifty prints by Peter Doig in a variety of media to reveal the consistency and extent of the artist's activities as a printmaker. The exhibition ranges from relatively straightforward etchings to complex prints that combine printmaking techniques including hard... Read more

Derrick Greaves

Paintings and Drawings. 1952-2002 12 Mar - 9 May 2003 Derrick Greaves first gained acclaim in the mid 1950s as a `kitchen-sink' painter, whose work was celebrated for its bold, matter of fact presentation of prosaic subjects drawn from the external world. In the years since then, the artist has also increasingly drawn inspiration from dreams and the unconscious to... Read more

Edward Burra. Stage and Cabaret

21 Jan - 7 Mar 2003 The exhibition focuses on some of Burra's favourite subjects: the cabaret, music-hall and stage. It includes not only drawings made in England but also works made on the artist's extensive world travels. The exhibition includes a series of little known stage and costume designs for Bizet's Carmen , which Burra... Read more

Henry Moore and the Geometry of Fear

Robert Adams, Kenneth Armitage, Reg Butler, Lynn Chadwick, Geoffrey Clarke, Bernard Meadows, Henry Moore, Eduardo Paolozzi and William Turnbull 11 Nov 2002 - 1 Jan 2003 Exactly fifty years ago this year the British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale presented a major exhibition entitled New Aspects of British Sculpture . Outside the pavilion the visitor was greeted with major works by Henry Moore and Reg Butler and inside there was a dramatic installation of the leading... Read more

Tony Bevan. The Complete Prints

Drypoints, etchings, woodcuts 1 Oct - 11 Nov 2002 The exhibition extends from Bevan's first etchings to a recently completed drypoint of a head. Tony Bevan's prints have always had a close relationship to his paintings and drawings but remain little known. They not only provide a powerful and accessible summary of Tony Bevan's concerns but have also played... Read more

The Battle for Realism

9 Sep - 1 Oct 2001 Exhibition including Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Henry Moore, William Scott, Stanley Spencer, Graham Sutherland. ESSAY IN THE GUARDIAN NEWSPAPER BY JAMES HYMAN Read more