Reginald Gray (artist)

Reginald Gray
Self-portrait in a Paris bistrot, 2001. Egg tempera and marble dust on canvas
Known for	portrait painting
Website	grayportraits

Reginald Gray is a portrait artist born in Dublin in 1930. After studying at The National College of Art in 1953, he was a student of Cecil ffrench Salkeld, ARHA learning old master techniques.From an early age Gray was influenced by the art of the Italian Renaissance especially the works of Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449-1494. He later became attached to two modernist Italians, Amedeo Modigliani 1884-1920 and Mario Sironi 1885-1961. This may be the reason for Gray's use of mostly Italian earth colours on his palette. He mixes his own paint from the raw pigments for his egg tempera work.

In 1957, he moved to London and had his first one man exhibition at the Abbot and Holder Gallery. He became 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 (London). In 1963, Gray relocated to France where he has lived for the past 45 years. Reginald Gray now lives between London and Paris and works from both cities. In 2006, his "The White Blouse" portrait won The Sandro Botticelli Prize in Florence, Italy.

As well as his Bacon portrait, Gray has painted many famous writers,musicians and artists such as Samuel Beckett, Alfred Schnittke, Ted Hughes, John Jordan, Patrick Swift, Gian Maria Volonte, Helena Bonham Carter and Juliette Binoche. Gray is an elected member of The American Society of Portrait Artists.

Dublin

Reginald Gray after normal schooling at All Saints, Blackrock and The Blackrock Technical Institute, entered The National College of Art and Design, Dublin but after a short period left to study under Cecil ffrench Salkeld ARHA. At the age of nineteen he 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.

"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 existentialism down on to canvas. However the promise of the ten years refered 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, which he did, 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."

File:Swift by Gray 1951.jpg

Wash drawing of Patrick Swift, 1951, by Reginald Gray

Gray had a small studio on Leeson St in the early 1950s. Patrick Swift visited him there and Gray made a wash drawing of Swift which some years later he used as a base for a large canvas hommage to the painter. 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 that play was given to the young actor/poet John Jordan. During the preparations and rehearsals Gray started a portrait of Jordan which he never finished. This work is in the collection of The Dublin Writers Museum in its unfinished state.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. The Salkeld household was visited by many famous writers, painters and musicians, such as Brian O'Nolan, Arland Ussher, Marten Cumberland and Kate O'Brian. Cecil was considered as one of Ireland's leading intellectuals. Another frequent visitor was the young musician John Beckett, (cousin of Samuel) whom Gray painted at that period. The portrait now hangs in St. Columba's College, Dublin where Beckett had his first music lessons.

Cyclorama design for the production of Jean-Paul Sartre's "Nekrassov" at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, 1956, by Reginald Gray

Gray was a good friend of Brendan Behan and spent many hours in the Dublin pubs together and they both had a passion for horse racing and often went out to Leopardstown Racecourse together. Later Behan asked Gray to be best man at his upcoming wedding to Beatrice Salkeld (daughter of Cecil) However on the morning of the wedding a complication arose when the priests found out that Gray was Protestant and did not permit him to sign the register. Before Gray left Dublin for London he designed many settings for The Pike Theatre including the famous production of "The Rose Tattoo"by Tennessee Williams and "Nekrassov" by the French writer Jean Paul Sartre which was mounted at The Gate Theatre. Gray later went on a tour of Ireland with The Dublin Repertory Theatre Co. designing their productions the most important being "The Wood of the Whispering" by M.J. Molloy.

London

Gray's first address in London in 1957 was at Lancaster Road near the Portobello markets. There he shared a flat with three Irish actors Donal Donnelly, Brian Phelan and Charles Roberts. Gray says " it was a wonderful atmosphere, a wild bohemian life, all of us were near broke but a great team" However Gray needed more solitude to paint and 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.

Francis Bacon by Reginald Gray, 1960. Egg tempera on wood, 45x37cm. Collection National Portrait Gallery, London.

He met a young girl from Bristol, Catherine Hall in November 1958 and they were married a month later in Caxton Hall London. In 1960 he met Eric Holder owner/director of the Abbott and Holder Gallery. After seeing Gray's works Holder gave him a one man exhibition a month later. This exhibition was a sellout with good press critics 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 with another good result.

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" as Gray put it. Gray flew to Paris and worked on the portrait which was then exhibited at The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. The work 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 but insisted on bringing up a case of champagne and large quantities of smoked salmon. 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 well known 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 out so he made the decision to move to Paris.

Rouen

File:Gray Triptych 1963.jpg

Triptych by Reginald Gray 1963, egg tempera on wood panel

Gray had the intention of going directly to Paris. He traveled train and boat to France but when the train was nearing Rouen he saw from the carriage window all the Gothic spires of Rouen Cathedral and many churches. He got off the train intending to pass only a few hours in that city. On walking around he came across a small art gallery Le Cour d'Albane which was situated on a small street that ran along the side of the Cathedral. The director of the gallery Andre Goupil suggested that Gray should have an exhibition there which of course meant getting works over from London. Gray agreed to this proposition and a month or so later he saw his first French exhibition.

In spite of excellent critics, sales were not as good as they had been in London. He found a small room without heat or running water for the little sum of 50 francs a month. It was on one of the oldest streets of Rouen, Rue des Fosses Louis V111. He passed a very severe winter there, filling buckets of water from the street water pump below. He was forced to turn to being 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.

Paris and Ravenel

"The White Blouse", 2005. This portrait won the "Sandro Botticelli Prize" Florence 2006.

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. An art student in Montparnasse, the quarter of Paris that Gray wanted to live in "near to the ghost of Amedeo Modigliani" told Gray that he might find living space in l'Academie de Feu on the nearby rue Delambre.

The academy was run by a very "boheme" Hungarian sculptor, Laszlo Szabo,who gave Gray a tour of the premises. About 15 young sculpture students lived and worked there under the supervision of the master. Laszlo told Gray to come back in six hours and he would find him "somewhere to sleep". On his return Gray was "bowled over" by what he saw. The sculptor with the aid of six of his students had built a small room from wood, plaster and resin with running water and electricity for a very small rent. The master, his then mistress and the students together with Gray, the only painter among them, would eat lunch and dinner at the large oak work table in the middle of the atelier while often a Spanish student would play the guitar or Szabo would sing Hungarian songs while many glasses of "vin de table" were downed.

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 reaching blocks that Szabo hated referring to them as "people living in rabbit hutches" The English sculptor Henry Moore and the Italian Marini exhibited in the exhibition as well as lesser known artists like Gray. During this period Gray exhibited from time to time single works 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. He got a job in the Paris edition of The New York Times working at night as a copy boy but later when the editor in chief Tom Daffron saw his paintings he commissioned Gray to paint his wife and two daughters. Later, Daffron requested Gray to draw portraits of people being interviewed by the New York Times writers. The subjects included philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, singer Jacques Brel, sculptor Alberto Giacometti and many others.

Portrait of ex "Elastica" singer and now abstract painter Justine Frischmann, 2002

In 1967 the Paris edition of The New York Times closed it's doors because of competition from The New York Herald Tribune. Together with his friend, the New York Times photographer Richard Khanlian, Gray hitchhiked to St Tropez, the posh spot in the south of France, and spent many weeks sleeping on the beach until they returned broke to Paris. Gray was once more finding times a bit rough when he met Gloria Emerson, a well known journalist from The New York Times and an old friend. She phoned G.Y. Dryansky, the bureau chief of Fairchild Publications' Paris Office, and asked him to give Gray a job, which he did.

Gray entered a period of life where he felt like an "outsider" in the fashion world. In spite of this he worked as a photographer for over five years, covering the Paris, Milan, Rome and London collections. He also worked as cameraman filming the fashion collections for German Vogue and Swedish Television. In 1995, Gray received a phone call from Adrian Darmon the French Art Historian and editor of Artcult, who was in London to visit the exhibition of mid twenty century art at The National Portrait Gallery. He informed Gray that his 1960 portrait of Francis Bacon was hanging there. Honor Clerk the then Curator and director of the exhibition invited Gray to come over from Paris. While he was there Clerk showed Gray all the works of Graham Sutherland that the Gallery had in their collection. Clerk knew from the past that Gray had been an admirer of Sutherland. Gray says today "Sutherland reached fame in the 1940s and was praised by such critics as Eric Newton and Kenneth Clark. Somwhere along the way he dropped into oblivion. I believe there was a lot of jealousy by some of todays well known painters who do not have the courage to admit that he had a certain influence on them". Before then Gray had directed his first full length feature in French titled "Jeu" (Game) which was based on his own idea. The story was of a German officer in France who wandered into a small French hamlet and killed all the habitants by enticing them to play Russian roulette. One of France's leading actors, Laurent Terzieff played the role of the priest with Dirk Kinnane and Bibi Hure in leading roles.

Portrait of German film director Werner Schroeter, 1977

Thomas Quinn Curtis, film critic of The Herald Tribune wrote "pity that Gray's film had been neglected for The Cannes Film Festival". However Gray says" I meant this work to be an avant garde art film and nothing more". Laszlo Szabo, on hearing that Gray had lost a lot of investment in the film proposed that Gray live in his Chateau de Ravenel, (Ravenel is a small town 50 miles north of Paris). Gray jumped at the idea and raised his second daughter Deirdre and son Terence there during a stay that lasted ten years. Gray looked after Szabo's four horses but suffered a severe fall in 1983 which left him even today with arthritis problems.Georgina Tasthruni who was the mother of Deirdre and Terence was from a Corsican father and Vietnamese mother. She took her own life in 2005 by throwing herself under a train in the Paris Metro.

While working as cameraman for Swedish Television in Paris at a Yyes Saint Laurent Collection, Gray met the German film director Werner Schroeter which resulted in a portrait. Gray had always greatly admired Schroeter's work since seeing the film "La Mort de Maria Malibran"

Russian Composer Alfred Schnittke, collection Royal College of Music, London.

In 1996 Gray made another step in directing his first theatrical work. He directed and designed the setting for the Belgian playwright Philippe Alkemade's script "Letters from Ireland". They opened at The Wexford Festival and continued a tour of Ireland finishing in Dublin and Belfast. Gray also played a small role in the production, the lead was interpreted by the Irish actress Mary Jordan. Gray decided that after all the theatre and the still and movie camera work he had to return to painting. In this later period he has had many one man exhibitions in Paris Galleries such as Galerie Marie d'Holmsky, Gallerie de la Grande Chaumierre, The Atelier Visconti, and shared one exhibition with his friend the late American artist Gregory Masurovsky.

He has exhibited frequently at the Salon de Montparnasse 14eme. In the early 1990s on a visit to Paris, the Prince Jefri Bolkiah, of Brunei commissioned Gray to paint his portrait.The work is now in the Brunei collection. At this period Gray met and befriended the Paris based Gaelic poet Derry O'Sullivan whom he has portrayed often as well as designing O'Sullivans bookcovers, The two friends are often seen together on the terraces of Parisien bistrots. Gray painted mostly from an early morning hour through to lunchtime. After doing his own cooking he would walk down rue Delambre to La Coupole where he would have coffee and a glass of Beaujolais with his artist friends "this was when La Coupole was familly owned and before it lost it's charm when taken over by a chain of restaurants" In 1994, UNESCO Paris gave Gray a large retrospective exhibition. In 1999 Gray met his partner Doina and they have since been living together in their two homes,near Chelsea in London and Montparnasse in Paris.

Gray's recent works include portraits of the poet Ted Hughes now in the collection of The Bankfield Museum,Yorkshire U.K. and Russian composer Alfred Schnittke in the collection of The Royal College of Music. London. Gray who is now 79 has spent the greater part of his life in France.

File:"The Claire Triptych" DCP 1477.JPG

The Claire Triptych, 1996. 111 x 44cm. (3 portraits in one frame)

Collections

Some of the public collections in which Gray's work appears are:

• National Portrait Gallery, London
• Museum of London
• Royal College of Music, London
• "Musica Nova" Anglo-Russian Music Academy, London
• Holy Cross church, St Pancras, London
• Bankfield Museum, Halifax
• National Portrait Gallery, Canberra
• Saint Columba's College, Dublin
• Dublin Writers Museum, Dublin
• Brunei royal familly

Sources

• "Artists' London-Holbein to Hirst" 2001. Merrell Publishers. (Museum of London). (page 133.)
• "Brendan Behan a Life" by Michael O'Sullivan. 1999. Publisher Robert Rinehart. New York. (pages 190/191.)
• "Soho in The Fifties and Sixties" by Jonathan Fryer, 1998. Publisher The National Portrait Gallery. London. (page 19.)
• "Beckett and Behan" by Alan Simpson. 1962. Publisher Routledge and Kegan Paul. London. (photos.3.6.13.and 15.)
• "An La Go dTainig Siad" (in Gaelic) by Derry O'Sullivan. 2005. Publisher. Coisceim. Dublin. (Cover and 1st page)
• "Dictionnaire Drouot Cotation 2004" Publisher, Larousse Diffusion. Paris. (page 242.)
• "Dizionario Enciclopedico Internazionale d'Arte Morderna e Contemporanea 2005/2006. Publisher Casa Editrice Alba. Ferarra. Italy . (page 147.)
• Film: Reginald Gray - Portrait of a Portrait Artist 2001. Response Entertainment Inc., N.Y.C. USA. Winner in the documentary category at the 2001 Telluride Indiefest

External links

• Reginald Gray pages at artmajeur.com
• Reginald Gray's blog