FRY GALLERY 44 ALDEBURGH
The Fry Gallery was opened by Cyril Fry (1918–2010) and his wife Shirley, originally located in Jermyn Street in London 1967–1986, but also operating during the music festivals in Aldeburgh, Suffolk from 1972. When the Jermyn Street lease ended, the Frys transferred their operation to 44 High Street, Aldeburgh, where they had held summer shows to coincide with the Aldeburgh Festival, while still putting on occasional exhibitions in hired spaces in London, the Aldeburgh gallery was also known as Gallery 44. They specialised in collecting and dealing in eighteenth and nineteenth-century British watercolours and drawings, including works by Thomas Gainsborough, Peter De Wint, Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851), and William Henry Hunt (1790-1864). John Nixon (c. 1750-1818) was the subject of the Fry Gallery last major exhibition in Aldeburgh at the time of the Festival in June 1999 and the last exhibition at Aldeburgh Gallery 44 was of photographer Paul Tucker in 2002. It is not connected to the Fry Gallery at Saffron Walden, Essex. Suffolk artists who exhibited at Gallery 44 include Cornelia Fitzroy, Maurice Alfred Kelly, Claire Lambert, Lisa Linsdell, Diana Marsden, Trevor Sowden, Robin Sterndale-Bennett, David Thompson and Verity Anne Wookey.
Cyril Fry, art dealer, was born in London on 27 May 1918 and he married in 1948, Shirley Bartrum and they had three sons and a daughter. Before opening the Fry Gallery in London, Cyril Fry worked as a specialised teacher for deaf children whilst also collecting and selling artwork from the workshop at his home in Blackheath; through his collecting he became friends with many prominent figures from the British art scene of the time, including Dudley Snelgrove (1906-1992), Leonard Gordon Duke (1890–1971), Edward Croft-Murray (1907–1980) and Paul Mellon (1907–1999). Cyril Fry died at Snape, Suffolk on 10 November 2010. The Paul Mellon Centre at Yale University has nine boxes of files on the Landon and Aldeburgh galleries.