Reginald Gray (artist)
Encyclopedia
Reginald Gray is a portrait artist born in Dublin in 1930. He studied at The National College of Art
(1953) and then moved to London, becoming part of the School of London led by Francis Bacon
, Lucian Freud
and Frank Auerbach
. In 1960, he painted a portrait of Bacon which now hangs in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London.Reginald Gray page at the National Portrait Gallery and has since painted portraits from life of writers, musicians and artists such as Samuel Beckett
, Harold Pinter
, Brendan Behan
, Garech Browne
, Derry O'Sullivan
, Alfred Schnittke
,
Ted Hughes
, Rupert Everett
and Yves Saint Laurent. In 1993 Gray had a retrospective exhibition at UNESCO
Paris and in 2006, his portrait "The White Blouse" won the Sandro Botticelli Prize in Florence, Italy.
, Dublin. After a short period he left to study under Cecil ffrench Salkeld ARHA. At the age of nineteen Gray joined The Dublin Atelier a small group of painters who exhibited at The Dublin Painters Gallery. Gray says that at this period "I was struck by the earlier works of the French painter Bernard Buffet
who had won the Prix de la critique
, in Paris in 1948 when he was just twenty years of age".
Gray had a studio on Leeson St in the early 1950s. There Gray made a wash drawing of the artist Patrick Swift
which he used as a base for a large canvas hommage to the painter some years later. Gray's first paid work was a commission by University College Dublin
to design the setting and costumes for their production of "The King's Threshold" by W.B. Yeats. The lead in the play was given to the young actor/poet John Jordan
. During the preparations and rehearsals Gray painted a portrait of Jordan which now hangs in the collection of The Dublin Writers Museum
. At this point the artist Cecil ffrench Salkeld ARHA (Associate of The Royal Hibernian Academy
) took Gray under his wing and gave him a room in his Dublin home where Gray studied old master techniques. Considered one of Ireland's leading intellectuals, Salkeld was visited by writers, painters and musicians, such as Brian O'Nolan, Arland Ussher
, Francis Stuart
, Marten Cumberland, Kate O'Brian and John Beckett
, cousin of Samuel
. Gray painted John Beckett during this period and the portrait now hangs in St. Columba's College, Dublin
, where Beckett had his first music lessons. Gray became a close friend of Brendan Behan
and was asked to be best man at Behan's wedding. Gray designed many settings for The Pike Theatre including the production of The Rose Tattoo
by Tennessee Williams
. After the success in Dublin, the play was transferred to The Grand Opera House
, Belfast and Gray went travelled there to redesign and create the much larger settings need for the bigger stage. Look Back in Anger
by John Osborne
was at the same time running at the Opera House and Gray befriended and sketched the leading actress Jocelyn Britton. Later he designed the sets for Nekrassov by Jean Paul Sartre which was mounted at The Gate Theatre
. Gray later went on a tour of Ireland with The Dublin Repertory Theatre Company designing their productions, the most important being The Wood of the Whispering by M. J. Molloy
.
, sharing a flat with three Irish actors Donal Donnelly
, Brian Phelan and Charles Roberts. Needing more solitude to paint, Gray moved to Bayswater
. He got a job in the display department at Whiteleys
department store designing and dressing their windows but still painting. In the same year he made a gouache
drawing of Barkers Store on Kensington High Street
showing the workmen refreshing the facade of the store. This work is now in the collection of The Museum of London
.
He met Catherine Hall in November 1958 and they were married a month later in Caxton Hall, London. In 1960, Eric Holder owner and director of the Abbott and Holder Gallery invited Gray to hold a one man exhibition. This exhibition received favourable reviews especially from The Arts Review, London. The English film actor Patrick Waddington
bought a number of Gray's works and arranged an exhibition for Gray and Aubrey Williams
, the painter from Guyana
at The Caravan Gallery, New York. Another exhibition for Gray at Abbott and Holder was programmed for the following year which had a further good reception. Alan Simpson, the Pike Theatre director, came to this exhibition and suggested that Gray should paint a portrait of Samuel Beckett. Simpson, being a good friend of Beckett, telephoned the writer at his Paris home "and the deal was done". Gray flew to Paris and worked on the portrait which was then exhibited at The Royal Hibernian Academy
, Dublin and is now in a private Dublin collection. In the same year Gray met Francis Bacon
in a Bayswater pub. Bacon was curious to see Gray's studio and while they were there Gray made a drawing of Bacon which he later turned into an egg tempera on wood portrait. The portrait was bought by the collector Aubrey Beese, who donated it to the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1975, where it remains today. By 1963 Gray's marriage was not working, and he moved to Paris.
he saw from the carriage window the Gothic
spires of Rouen Cathedral
and alighted to pass a few hours in the city. On walking around he came across Le Cour d'Albane, a small art gallery near the Cathedral. The director of the gallery Andre Goupil suggested that Gray should hold an exhibition and bring works over from London. Gray agreed to this proposition and a month later had his first French exhibition. In spite of good reviews, sales were not as good as they had been in London. He found a cheap room without heat or running water on the Rue des Fosses Louis V111 and passed a severe winter there. He became a pavement artist, copying Raphael
, Domenico Ghirlandaio
, and other Florentine
masters on the ground. A year later conditions improved when he got long periods of work as an extra in the Théâtre des Arts de Rouen, mostly in Opera. In spite of the rough life Gray exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Normands at The Musée des Beaux-Arts
for three successive years before he eventually moved on to Paris.
and the Italian Marini exhibited also at the exhibition. During this period Gray exhibited at the Daniel Casanova Gallery at the Palais Royale
. After three years at the Academy Gray moved from time to time to small ateliers
on the left bank such as Rue Descartes and Rue des Saints Peres
Gray worked as a copy editor at the Paris edition of The New York Times and later drew portraits of people being interviewed by the paper's writers. The subjects included philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, singer Jacques Brel
, and sculptor Alberto Giacometti
. During the 1968 student reveloution in Paris Gray met the young Australian writer Jill Neville and painted her portrait (National Portrait Gallery, Australia). Gray went on to work at Fairchild Publications. He worked as a fashion photographer for over five years, covering collections in Paris, Milan, Rome and London. He also worked as cameraman filming the fashion collections for German Vogue and Swedish Television. Gray directed his first full length feature in French titled "Jeu" (Game),aka "Le Passant" starring Laurent Terzieff, Dirk Kinnane, Pascale de Boysson and Bibi Hure. Gray then lived in the Chateau de Ravenel, 50 miles north of Paris and raised his second daughter Deirdre and son Terence there during a stay that lasted ten years. Georgina Tasthruni, the mother of Deirdre and Terence took her own life in 2005 by throwing herself under a train in the Paris Metro.
From 1993, Gray taught painting at The Irish College in Paris. In 1996, Gray directed and designed the setting for Letters from Ireland by Belgian playwright Philippe Alkemade, opening at The Wexford Festival and touring Ireland. In this later period he had many one man exhibitions in Paris Galleries such as Galerie Marie de Holmsky, Gallerie de la Grande Chaumierre, The Atelier Visconti, and the Salon de Montparnasse 14em, also exhibiting with the late American artist Gregory Masurovsky. UNESCO
Paris mounted a large retrospective of Gray's works in 1994. Gray's works since that point include a portraits of poet Ted Hughes
(at the Bankfield Museum
, Halifax), Russian composer Alfred Schnittke
, (The Royal College of Music
and The Russian Academy of Music, London), and Harold Pinter
(1998) not long before Pinter's death. In 1995, Gray's 1960 portrait of Francis Bacon
was hung in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
National College of Art and Design
The National College of Art and Design is a national art and design school in Dublin, Ireland.-History:Situated on Thomas Street, the NCAD started as a private drawing school and has become a national institution educating over 1,500 day and evening students as artists, designers and art educators...
(1953) and then moved to London, becoming part of the School of London led by Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon (painter)
Francis Bacon , was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds...
, Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...
and Frank Auerbach
Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...
. In 1960, he painted a portrait of Bacon which now hangs in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in London.Reginald Gray page at the National Portrait Gallery and has since painted portraits from life of writers, musicians and artists such as Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, Brendan Behan
Brendan Behan
Brendan Francis Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both Irish and English. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army.-Early life:...
, Garech Browne
Garech Browne
The Hon. Garech Domnagh Browne, born 25 June, 1939, is a member of the titled family of Oranmore and Browne in the West of Ireland and is a wealthy patron of Irish arts, notably traditional Irish music...
, Derry O'Sullivan
Derry O'Sullivan
Derry O'Sullivan is an Irish poet, writing in the Irish language. He has been living in Paris for many years and is a teacher of English at the Sorbonne , at ISEP and at the Catholic university, l'Institut catholique. He has won four literary awards from the Irish Language Academy, Oireachtas na...
, Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...
,
Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
, Rupert Everett
Rupert Everett
Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981, when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as an openly gay student at an English public school, set in the 1930s...
and Yves Saint Laurent. In 1993 Gray had a retrospective exhibition at UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
Paris and in 2006, his portrait "The White Blouse" won the Sandro Botticelli Prize in Florence, Italy.
Dublin
After schooling at All Saints, Blackrock and The Blackrock Technical Institute, Gray studied at The National College of Art and DesignNational College of Art and Design
The National College of Art and Design is a national art and design school in Dublin, Ireland.-History:Situated on Thomas Street, the NCAD started as a private drawing school and has become a national institution educating over 1,500 day and evening students as artists, designers and art educators...
, Dublin. After a short period he left to study under Cecil ffrench Salkeld ARHA. At the age of nineteen Gray joined The Dublin Atelier a small group of painters who exhibited at The Dublin Painters Gallery. Gray says that at this period "I was struck by the earlier works of the French painter Bernard Buffet
Bernard Buffet
Bernard Buffet was a French painter of Expressionism and Member of the Anti-Abstract Art Group "L'homme Témoin [the Witness-Man]".-Life and work:...
who had won the Prix de la critique
Prix de la critique
The Prix de la critique is a prize awarded by the Association des Critiques et des journalistes de Bande Dessinée to the best comic album released for a year in France. Previously, from 1984 to 2003, it was called Prix Bloody Mary and awarded at the Angoulême International Comics Festival...
, in Paris in 1948 when he was just twenty years of age".
- "This was Buffet's earlier period, between 1947 and 1957 when I believe he produced his best work and was the first post war artist to put existentialismExistentialismExistentialism is a term applied to a school of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual...
down on to canvas. However the promise of the ten years referred to failed to arrive as his work seemed to fade into some commercial stream of over production. It was as if he had made some Faustian contract to be become rich, but the earlier poetry in his work simply vanished. The first work I saw after this that had that same great impact on me and reminds me of the expression that "less is more" was a medium sized work by the Irish artist Patrick Swift hung if my memory is correct in the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in Dublin. The work was titled "Boy with Pear" I stood before this work for many hours feeling the intense mystery of the work and that the atmosphere around the subject was unpolluted like a Vermeer but with much greater force."
Gray had a studio on Leeson St in the early 1950s. There Gray made a wash drawing of the artist Patrick Swift
Patrick Swift
Patrick Swift was an artist born in Dublin, Ireland. Patrick Swift was a painter and key cultural figure in Dublin and London before moving to the Algarve in southern Portugal, where he is buried in the town of Porches...
which he used as a base for a large canvas hommage to the painter some years later. Gray's first paid work was a commission by University College Dublin
University College Dublin
University College Dublin ) - formally known as University College Dublin - National University of Ireland, Dublin is the Republic of Ireland's largest, and Ireland's second largest, university, with over 1,300 faculty and 17,000 students...
to design the setting and costumes for their production of "The King's Threshold" by W.B. Yeats. The lead in the play was given to the young actor/poet John Jordan
John Jordan (poet)
John Jordan was an Irish poet born in Dublin on 8 April 1930. He was educated at Synge Street CBS, University College, Dublin and Pembroke College, Oxford. In his teens he acted on the stage of the Gate Theatre, Dublin, before winning a Scholarship in English and French to Oxford University from...
. During the preparations and rehearsals Gray painted a portrait of Jordan which now hangs in the collection of The Dublin Writers Museum
Dublin Writers Museum
The Dublin Writers Museum was opened in November 1991 at No 18, Parnell Square, Dublin, Ireland. The museum occupies an original 18th-century house, which accommodates the museum rooms, library, gallery and administration area. The annexe behind it has a coffee shop and bookshop on the ground floor...
. At this point the artist Cecil ffrench Salkeld ARHA (Associate of The Royal Hibernian Academy
Royal Hibernian Academy
The Royal Hibernian Academy is an artist-based and artist-oriented institution in Ireland, founded in Dublin in 1823.-History:The RHA was founded as the result of 30 Irish artists petitioning the government for a charter of incorporation...
) took Gray under his wing and gave him a room in his Dublin home where Gray studied old master techniques. Considered one of Ireland's leading intellectuals, Salkeld was visited by writers, painters and musicians, such as Brian O'Nolan, Arland Ussher
Arland Ussher
Percival "Percy" Arland Ussher was an Anglo-Irish academic, essayist and translator.Born in Battersea, London, he studied at Cambridge University for some time...
, Francis Stuart
Francis Stuart
Henry Francis Montgomery Stuart was an Irish writer. His novels have been described as having a thrusting modernist iconoclasm. Awarded the highest artistic accolade in Ireland before his death in 2000, his unwillingness to take a clear moral stance with regard to his years spent in Nazi...
, Marten Cumberland, Kate O'Brian and John Beckett
John S. Beckett
John Stewart Beckett , was an Irish musician, composer and conductor; cousin of the famous writer and playwright Samuel Beckett.-Youth and education:...
, cousin of Samuel
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
. Gray painted John Beckett during this period and the portrait now hangs in St. Columba's College, Dublin
St. Columba's College, Dublin
St Columba's College is a co-educational boarding school founded in 1843 located in Whitechurch, Dublin, Ireland. Among the founders of the college are Edwin Richard W. W. Quin, Lord Adare , the Right Hon. William Monsell , Dr...
, where Beckett had his first music lessons. Gray became a close friend of Brendan Behan
Brendan Behan
Brendan Francis Behan was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both Irish and English. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army.-Early life:...
and was asked to be best man at Behan's wedding. Gray designed many settings for The Pike Theatre including the production of The Rose Tattoo
The Rose Tattoo
- External links :*...
by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
. After the success in Dublin, the play was transferred to The Grand Opera House
Grand Opera House (Belfast)
The Grand Opera House is a theatre in Belfast, Northern Ireland, designed by the most prolific theatre architect of the period, Frank Matcham. It opened on 23 December 1895....
, Belfast and Gray went travelled there to redesign and create the much larger settings need for the bigger stage. Look Back in Anger
Look Back in Anger
Look Back in Anger is a John Osborne play—made into films in 1959, 1980, and 1989 -- about a love triangle involving an intelligent but disaffected young man , his upper-middle-class, impassive wife , and her haughty best friend . Cliff, an amiable Welsh lodger, attempts to keep the peace...
by John Osborne
John Osborne
John James Osborne was an English playwright, screenwriter, actor and critic of the Establishment. The success of his 1956 play Look Back in Anger transformed English theatre....
was at the same time running at the Opera House and Gray befriended and sketched the leading actress Jocelyn Britton. Later he designed the sets for Nekrassov by Jean Paul Sartre which was mounted at The Gate Theatre
Gate Theatre
The Gate Theatre, in Dublin, was founded in 1928 by Hilton Edwards and Micheál Mac Liammóir, initially using the Abbey Theatre's Peacock studio theatre space to stage important works by European and American dramatists...
. Gray later went on a tour of Ireland with The Dublin Repertory Theatre Company designing their productions, the most important being The Wood of the Whispering by M. J. Molloy
M. J. Molloy
Michael Joseph Molloy was an Irish playwright. He was born and died in Miltown, County Galway.Molloy originally intended to become a priest, but contracted tuberculosis as a young man. He began writing plays during his long hospital stays. His first play, Old Road, was produced at the Abbey...
.
London
Gray moved to London in 1957 and lived near the Portobello marketPortobello Road
Portobello Road is a street in the Notting Hill district of The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in west London, England. It runs almost the length of Notting Hill from south to north, roughly parallel with Ladbroke Grove. On Saturdays it is home to Portobello Road Market, one of London's...
, sharing a flat with three Irish actors Donal Donnelly
Donal Donnelly
Donal Donnelly was an English-born Irish theatre and film actor. He was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, but raised in Dublin, Ireland....
, Brian Phelan and Charles Roberts. Needing more solitude to paint, Gray moved to Bayswater
Bayswater
Bayswater is an area of west London in the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the west . It is a built-up district located 3 miles west-north-west of Charing Cross, bordering the north of Hyde Park over Kensington Gardens and having a population density of...
. He got a job in the display department at Whiteleys
Whiteleys
Whiteleys is a shopping centre in London, England. It was London's first department store, located in the Bayswater area. The store's main entrance was located on Queensway.-History:...
department store designing and dressing their windows but still painting. In the same year he made a gouache
Gouache
Gouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...
drawing of Barkers Store on Kensington High Street
Kensington High Street
Kensington High Street is the main shopping street in Kensington, west London. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
showing the workmen refreshing the facade of the store. This work is now in the collection of The Museum of London
Museum of London
The Museum of London documents the history of London from the Prehistoric to the present day. The museum is located close to the Barbican Centre, as part of the striking Barbican complex of buildings created in the 1960s and 70s as an innovative approach to re-development within a bomb damaged...
.
He met Catherine Hall in November 1958 and they were married a month later in Caxton Hall, London. In 1960, Eric Holder owner and director of the Abbott and Holder Gallery invited Gray to hold a one man exhibition. This exhibition received favourable reviews especially from The Arts Review, London. The English film actor Patrick Waddington
Patrick Waddington
Patrick Waddington was an English actor, educated at Gresham's School, Holt, Norfolk. Born and died in York, England.-Filmography:*Department S: Who Plays the Dummy? - NATO General...
bought a number of Gray's works and arranged an exhibition for Gray and Aubrey Williams
Aubrey Williams
Aubrey Williams was a prominent artist and art lecturer in the United Kingdom.Williams was educated and worked in the Civil Service...
, the painter from Guyana
Guyana
Guyana , officially the Co-operative Republic of Guyana, previously the colony of British Guiana, is a sovereign state on the northern coast of South America that is culturally part of the Anglophone Caribbean. Guyana was a former colony of the Dutch and of the British...
at The Caravan Gallery, New York. Another exhibition for Gray at Abbott and Holder was programmed for the following year which had a further good reception. Alan Simpson, the Pike Theatre director, came to this exhibition and suggested that Gray should paint a portrait of Samuel Beckett. Simpson, being a good friend of Beckett, telephoned the writer at his Paris home "and the deal was done". Gray flew to Paris and worked on the portrait which was then exhibited at The Royal Hibernian Academy
Royal Hibernian Academy
The Royal Hibernian Academy is an artist-based and artist-oriented institution in Ireland, founded in Dublin in 1823.-History:The RHA was founded as the result of 30 Irish artists petitioning the government for a charter of incorporation...
, Dublin and is now in a private Dublin collection. In the same year Gray met Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon (painter)
Francis Bacon , was an Irish-born British figurative painter known for his bold, austere, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. Bacon's painterly but abstract figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages set against flat, nondescript backgrounds...
in a Bayswater pub. Bacon was curious to see Gray's studio and while they were there Gray made a drawing of Bacon which he later turned into an egg tempera on wood portrait. The portrait was bought by the collector Aubrey Beese, who donated it to the National Portrait Gallery, London in 1975, where it remains today. By 1963 Gray's marriage was not working, and he moved to Paris.
Rouen
Gray travelled from London by train and boat, aiming for Paris but when the train was nearing RouenRouen
Rouen , in northern France on the River Seine, is the capital of the Haute-Normandie region and the historic capital city of Normandy. Once one of the largest and most prosperous cities of medieval Europe , it was the seat of the Exchequer of Normandy in the Middle Ages...
he saw from the carriage window the Gothic
Gothic architecture
Gothic architecture is a style of architecture that flourished during the high and late medieval period. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture....
spires of Rouen Cathedral
Rouen Cathedral
Rouen Cathedral is a Roman Catholic Gothic cathedral in Rouen, in northwestern France. It is the seat of the Archbishop of Rouen and Normandy.-History:...
and alighted to pass a few hours in the city. On walking around he came across Le Cour d'Albane, a small art gallery near the Cathedral. The director of the gallery Andre Goupil suggested that Gray should hold an exhibition and bring works over from London. Gray agreed to this proposition and a month later had his first French exhibition. In spite of good reviews, sales were not as good as they had been in London. He found a cheap room without heat or running water on the Rue des Fosses Louis V111 and passed a severe winter there. He became a pavement artist, copying Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
, Domenico Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. Among his many apprentices was Michelangelo.-Early years:Ghirlandaio's full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi...
, and other Florentine
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
masters on the ground. A year later conditions improved when he got long periods of work as an extra in the Théâtre des Arts de Rouen, mostly in Opera. In spite of the rough life Gray exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Normands at The Musée des Beaux-Arts
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen
The musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen is an art museum in Rouen, northern France. Founded in 1801 by Napoleon I, its current building was built between 1880 and 1888 and completely renovated in 1994...
for three successive years before he eventually moved on to Paris.
Paris and Ravenel
Having felt that " he had exhausted Rouen and that Rouen had exhausted him", Gray arrived in Paris with little money, in mid 1964. In this year his eldest daughter Eleonore was born. Gray came to live at l'Academie de Feu on the rue Delambre, run by the Hungarian sculptor, Laszlo Szabo. About 15 young sculpture students lived and worked there under the supervision of the master. The sculptor with the aid of six of his students built Gray a small room in the studio from wood, plaster and resin with running water and electricity. In the second year that Gray lived at the Academy, Szabo mounted a large exhibition of Sculpture and Painting entitled "Le Monde apres les Buildings", buildings referring to the modern high rise blocks that Szabo hated. The English sculptor Henry MooreHenry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....
and the Italian Marini exhibited also at the exhibition. During this period Gray exhibited at the Daniel Casanova Gallery at the Palais Royale
Palais Royale
Palais Royale is a dance hall in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on Lake Shore Boulevard at the foot of Roncesvalles Avenue on Lake Ontario. Originally built as a boat works, it became notable as a night club in the now-defunct Sunnyside Amusement Park, hosting many prominent 'big band' jazz bands...
. After three years at the Academy Gray moved from time to time to small ateliers
Studio
A studio is an artist's or worker's workroom, or the catchall term for an artist and his or her employees who work within that studio. This can be for the purpose of architecture, painting, pottery , sculpture, scrapbooking, photography, graphic design, filmmaking, animation, radio or television...
on the left bank such as Rue Descartes and Rue des Saints Peres
Gray worked as a copy editor at the Paris edition of The New York Times and later drew portraits of people being interviewed by the paper's writers. The subjects included philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, singer Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel
Jacques Brel was a Belgian singer-songwriter who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following in France initially, and later throughout the world. He was widely considered a master of the modern chanson...
, and sculptor Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...
. During the 1968 student reveloution in Paris Gray met the young Australian writer Jill Neville and painted her portrait (National Portrait Gallery, Australia). Gray went on to work at Fairchild Publications. He worked as a fashion photographer for over five years, covering collections in Paris, Milan, Rome and London. He also worked as cameraman filming the fashion collections for German Vogue and Swedish Television. Gray directed his first full length feature in French titled "Jeu" (Game),aka "Le Passant" starring Laurent Terzieff, Dirk Kinnane, Pascale de Boysson and Bibi Hure. Gray then lived in the Chateau de Ravenel, 50 miles north of Paris and raised his second daughter Deirdre and son Terence there during a stay that lasted ten years. Georgina Tasthruni, the mother of Deirdre and Terence took her own life in 2005 by throwing herself under a train in the Paris Metro.
From 1993, Gray taught painting at The Irish College in Paris. In 1996, Gray directed and designed the setting for Letters from Ireland by Belgian playwright Philippe Alkemade, opening at The Wexford Festival and touring Ireland. In this later period he had many one man exhibitions in Paris Galleries such as Galerie Marie de Holmsky, Gallerie de la Grande Chaumierre, The Atelier Visconti, and the Salon de Montparnasse 14em, also exhibiting with the late American artist Gregory Masurovsky. UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
Paris mounted a large retrospective of Gray's works in 1994. Gray's works since that point include a portraits of poet Ted Hughes
Ted Hughes
Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...
(at the Bankfield Museum
Bankfield Museum
Bankfield Museum is a grade II listed historic house museum, incorporating a regimental museum and textiles gallery in Boothtown, Halifax, England...
, Halifax), Russian composer Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Schnittke ; November 24, 1934 – August 3, 1998) was a Russian and Soviet composer. Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylistic technique in works such as the epic First Symphony and First Concerto Grosso...
, (The Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
and The Russian Academy of Music, London), and Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
(1998) not long before Pinter's death. In 1995, Gray's 1960 portrait of Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
was hung in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Collections
Some of the public collections in which Gray's work appears are:- National Portrait Gallery, London
- Museum of LondonMuseum of LondonThe Museum of London documents the history of London from the Prehistoric to the present day. The museum is located close to the Barbican Centre, as part of the striking Barbican complex of buildings created in the 1960s and 70s as an innovative approach to re-development within a bomb damaged...
- Royal College of MusicRoyal College of MusicThe Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
, London - Holy Cross church, St PancrasHoly Cross church, St PancrasHoly Cross church is a church on Cromer Street in the St Pancras area of the London Borough of Camden. It was built 1887–88 by Joseph Peacock.The church began as a district chapelry in 1876 before becoming a parish in 1888...
, London - Bankfield MuseumBankfield MuseumBankfield Museum is a grade II listed historic house museum, incorporating a regimental museum and textiles gallery in Boothtown, Halifax, England...
, Halifax - National Portrait GalleryNational Portrait Gallery (Australia)The National Portrait Gallery of Australia is a collection of portraits of prominent Australians that are important in their field of endeavour or whose life sets them apart as an individual of long-term public interest...
, Canberra - Saint Columba's College, Dublin
- Dublin Writers MuseumDublin Writers MuseumThe Dublin Writers Museum was opened in November 1991 at No 18, Parnell Square, Dublin, Ireland. The museum occupies an original 18th-century house, which accommodates the museum rooms, library, gallery and administration area. The annexe behind it has a coffee shop and bookshop on the ground floor...
, Dublin - Brunei royal familyHassanal BolkiahGeneral Haji Sir Hassan al-Bolkiah Mu'izzaddin Waddaulah GCB GCMG is the Sultan and Yang Di-Pertuan of Brunei Darussalam, the 29th Sultan of Brunei and the first Prime Minister of Brunei Darussalam...
External links
- Reginald Gray at Artmajeur. France.
- Reginald Gray at Artchive. U.S.
- Reginald Gray at Artactif France.
- Reginald Gray at Theatre. France.
- Reginald Gray at Hebdenbridge News. Yorkshire. U.K.
- Reginald Gray in Newstatesman. London. U.K.
- Reginald Gray blog