ABBEY GALLERY
Abbey Gallery at 2 Victoria Street, Westminster, London, originally the trading arm of W. R. Deighton & Sons who were originally established in the closing years of the 19th century as fine art dealers and publishers. William Robert Deighton (1845-1932) from Greenwich then in Kent began his career as a pawnbroker's assistant but in the 1881 census he is listed as an art dealer. In 1905 he published his 'Illustrated Catalogue of Publications Issued by W R Deighton and Sons Ltd, Fine Art Publishers and Dealers, Frame Makers' and his son Wilfred Victor Deighton (1888-1959) also worked with him in the business. The first notice of the 'Abbey Gallery' at 2 Victoria Street of W. R. Deighton & Sons Ltd., with their premises at 4 Grand Hotel Building, Charing Cross and 35 Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square, was in an advertisement in the Daily Express of 18 October 1924 and the gallery did champion Anthony Gross (1905-1984) and sponsored the future Royal Academician to travel around Europe and North Africa sending back to London paintings, drawings and etchings which resulted in Gross having his first solo London exhibition in 1924. They exhibited the works of the members of the Society of Parson Painters and the last exhibition noted was of the works of Countess Ingegerd Ahlefeldt-Laurvig (1900-1986) on 30 June 1930. Suffolk exhibiting artists included Winifred Austen, Malcolm Osborne Sir Henry George Rushbury, Leonard Squirrell, Sidney Tushingham and Arthur Pretyman Waller. Other exhibitors included William Lionel Wyllie (1851-1931), Australian artists Sydney Long (1871-1955), Lionel Lindsay (1874-1961), Henri Benedictus Van Raalte (1881-1929), Thomas Joseph Friedensen (1877-1931), Sydney Ure Smith (1887-1949), Archibald Bertram Webb (1887-1944), Norman Alfred William Lindsay (1879-1969) and the Pastel Society held their 1929 exhibition at the Gallery. The gallery ceased to trade around 1930 and the company was struck off in 1933.