CHRISTOPHER HULL GALLERY
Christopher Robert Hull (19 December 1927-9 April 2007) established his first Gallery in 1974. Christopher Hull was the son of a barrister and a nephew of Ipswich MP, Richard Rapier Stokes (27 January 1897–3 August 1957), Hull initially trained as a barrister but was never called to the Bar but became a racing tipster who turned art dealer to pursue his lifelong enthusiasm for 20th-century British artists. In 1974 he was living, with his first wife and their children, in Wimbledon village, just off the Common, and when a neighbouring teashop closed, he took over the premises and reopened them as the Annexe Gallery, showing such artists as Tessa Newcomb and Pauline Vincent (1940-). Seven years later, emboldened by his modest but genuine success as an art dealer, he took his gallery to Fulham Road, and two years later nearer the heart of things, to Belgravia. Hull was enthusiastic about the next generation, the so-called Neo-Romantics of the 1940s, especially Michael Ayrton (1921-1975) and John Craxton (1922-2009) but his main interest as a dealer was in modern British artists. As well as senior figures such as Norman Adams (1927-2005), his interest included such younger discoveries as Michael Peckham (1935-2021), Sarah Raphael, Kitty North (1963-), Tessa Newcomb, Sarah Natasha Raphael, David Lewis (1955-) and Claire Harrigan (1964-). He was the most approachable of West End dealers, always happy to chat to anyone who wandered into the gallery, especially if they proved sympathetic to one of his pet artists. The Motcomb Street Gallery, Hull's third, in Belgravia closed in 1998. Other Suffolk artists who exhibited with Christopher Hull include Eileen Bell and Elsie Evelyn Few.