Roger Fry

Boats in a Harbour (St-Tropez)
1915
Oil on canvas
71.5 x 91 cm
Gifted by the Friends of Wakefield Art Gallery and Museums, 1939. Photography Norman Taylor

Roger Fry was a painter, art critic and member of the Bloomsbury Group. He advanced modern art in Britain due to his interest in French Post-Impressionist painting.The vibrant colours in this work are typical of other expressive European painters of this period such as Paul Gauguin and André Derain.

This work was gifted to the collection by Alfred Alexander Haley, a wealthy West Yorkshire mill owner. Haley was one of the first major donors to the Collection and was responsible for setting up the Wakefield Permanent Art Fund, which helped make purchases for the collection. Between the 1920s and 1940s, Haley donated 163 works from his own vast art collection including works by Henry Moore, Jacob Kramer and Anne Redpath.