John McEwen on Britain’s oldest modern-art gallery – and the astonishing masterpieces it’s sold
This year marks the centenary of the Mayor Gallery, which can claim to be the oldest modern-art gallery in the UK. It was founded in 1925 by Fred Mayor (1903-73) who opened it in Cork Street, London. Over the years, it attracted rival galleries, making Cork Street the centre of the UK’s contemporary gallery scene. Today, under the ownership and dynamic direction of his son James Mayor, the gallery is at 9 Bury Street. Fred Mayor was the son of William Frederick ‘Fred’ Mayor RA (1866-16), among England’s foremost impressionist painters. His father trained in France and lived there for almost a decade, making his son a lifelong Francophile. The Mayor Gallery kept Britain abreast of European developments via the artistic Mecca of Paris, surrealism to the fore. In Anthony Powell’s 1936 novel Agents and Patients, Fred Mayor appears as the gallery-owner Reggie Frott; the surname acknowledging his championing of...
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