Biographical material and criticism
THE artistic work of one who is almost the
youngest of the Associates of tlie Academy
is noticeable and delightful not only because Mr.
Gregory differs from so many of his brethren by the
extent of his achievements, but also because he is
peculiarly free from the preoccupations which are
wont to limit the efforts and harass the
imaginations of cultivated people. I am told, and can well
believe, that Mr. Gregory is among the best read men
in London — among the most widely read — but if he
has read much,. . . he has not
been overpowered. Neither through literature nor
society has he submitted himself unduly to influences
which are seductive and gentle, but which often end
by debilitating. In the last quarter of the Nine-
teenth Century he has had the extreme courage
to see the world with his own eyes. The Art and
Letters of the past have given him a cultivation that
he has been strong enough to bear. They have not
destroyed his individuality: they have hardly affected
it. His forerunners have, indeed, taught him.
Now in Italy and now in Holland, he has seen their
work with the admiration which no fairly observant
person can withhold from the art of Titian or that of
Jan Steen. But the poetic realism of the Venetian
has left him as free as has the more prosaic fidelity
of the Dutchman. Feebler, for I will not say more
sensitive, personalities have discovered in Botticelli or
Pollajuolo qualities to which they have been obliged
to submit. The pupil has declared himself when he
has recognised the master. Mr. Gregory, it would
seem, is nobody's pupil.
The circumstances of Mr. Gregory's early days, his early training, and the nature of his literary education, his first artistic pursuits — all have had the tendency to send or to keep him among modern things, to engage him chiefly in translating into more or less beautiful colour and line an every-day experience and no remote vision. The son of an engineer, and born in a modern seaport town — Southampton; his literary culture gained chiefly for himself; owing nothing to universities, and little to Academic men — the delusion has never been encouraged within him that the age in which he exists is an age whose influences it is necessary to avoid, and accordingly when another generation than his own takes note of his art and estimates it, it will be found to contain an extraordinarily ample share of the accurate yet really pictorial record of the "very form and pressure" of the time in which it was produced. In it will be the signs of the keen vision — in it is the precise yet beautiful rendering — of much even of what is trivial and accidental in the life of the moment. In so far as it belongs to genre, it belongs to that which is concerned with the things which its creator has actually known. — Frederick Wedmore
Works with images on this site
Bibliography
Wedmore, Frederick. “E. J. Gregory, A.R.A.” Magazine of Art. 7 (1883-84): 350-59.
Created 31 December 2014