Stafford Gallery

The Stafford Gallery was an art gallery in London in the early twentieth century. It opened at 34 Old Bond Street on the corner with Stafford Street before moving to 1 Duke Street, St James’s by 1910. The gallery showed works by both international artists such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne and British painters like Walter Sickert and Sir William Nicholson. It hosted exhibitions of watercolours by William Nicholson of Oxford colleges in 1903, with lithographs published in 1905. The gallery also featured an exhibition of old masters in 1910 with Nicholson designing the catalogue cover. The gallery gained attention for its avant-garde exhibitions soon after Roger Fry’s influential show Manet and the Post-Impressionists at the Grafton Galleries in 1910–1911. In 1911 it presented works by Gustave Courbet, Walter Sickert, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne, with possible displays of Camille Pissarro and Vincent van Gogh. Spencer Gore painted *Gauguins and Connoisseurs* depicting the gallery’s Gauguin exhibition. The following year featured works by Scottish Colourist J.D. Fergusson and drawings by Picasso. Visitors would find a gallery space in the heart of London’s art district, where changing exhibitions showcased modern and traditional works. The building at Old Bond Street stood on a busy corner, linking the gallery to the city’s cultural life. Exhibitions were accompanied by printed catalogues and sometimes lithographs, adding to the gallery’s reputation. The space fostered connections between British and European artists, bridging different artistic movements. Though the gallery no longer exists, its role in early modern art remains recognised in art history.