MICHAEL PARKIN GALLERY
The Michael Parkin Gallery was opened in 1972 by Michael Parkin (1931-2014) in Halkin Arcade, off Motcomb Street, and in 1974 moved a few hundred yards down the road to the Motcomb Street premises he continued to occupy for the next quarter of a century. The Gallery dealt in Modern British Art for nearly 30 years and the artists he has sold through his exhibitions include James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), Henry Greaves (1843-1904) and his brother Walter Greaves (1846-1930) with solo exhibitions for Jacob Kramer (1892-1962), Álvaro Guevara [Reimers] (1894–1951) Nina Hamnett (1890-1956), William Patrick Roberts (1895-1980) and John Minton (1917-1957), as well as to maverick spirits such as Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton (1904-1980) and Stephen Tennant (1906-1987). He staged in all over two hundred and forty separate exhibitions but in 1999, Michael Parkin closed his Motcomb Street gallery due to a rent increase but began dealing privately from his Gunton Hall, Norfolk home and at art fairs, alongside his second wife Diana Parkin, née Head, an artist, whom he married 1983. Suffolk artists who exhibited with the Michael Parkin Gallery include Barbara Helen Gilligan and Emilie Gwynne-Jones.