1902-1908 Painting trips in England and France

This period of Gray’s life was full of a very active social life spent in the company of other artists, writers and his extended family. There were trips to stay with the Pegrams at Graffham in Sussex, an area where many landscape painters were living.

The picture below seems to fit in with this period of his life when he was active in London and the country, and combining painting and a busy social life. On the back of the photograph is written ‘Ronald Gray and friend”.

He also became great friends with Mary and Hugh Hammersley. Hugh was a banker and they lived in some state in Hampstead. Mary was painted by Sargent and this portrait is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The Hammersleys circle of friends included Henry James, Max Beerbohm, Wilson Steer, John Sargent, Walter Sickert, Tonks and Gray and many were regular attendees at dinner on Sunday. Gray also describes a summer painting holiday at Studland in Dorset with Tonks. The Hammersleys were cruising in their yacht Marcia and he spent many nights on board in considerable luxury.

Hugh Hammersley was a generous patron to Sickert who was ‘generally hard up’ and there are many other mentions of Sickert in the memoirs. Gray remembers Sickert as ‘always unexpected’ and tells the following story to illustrate this characterisation:

‘I had been to lunch with him and his wife in Gloucester Crescent, Regents Park.  He was in good spirits, and extremely well.  A day or two later I was astonished to hear that he was dangerously ill, so I wrote to Mrs Sickert for news. This was the reply I received: 

“Dear Mr Gray,  Thank you so much for your kind and sympathetic note.  Walter has given us a terrible fright, but is now almost well.  He seemed so ill – indeed was – for ten days, that the doctors wavered between typhoid and appendicitis, and when it was proved that it could not be the first, an august specialist was summoned who pronounced it to be undoubtedly the second, and that he must be operated upon in two days.  This news had such a cheering effect on the invalid, and the excitement of being waited upon by two trained nurses, who sterilised the whole house and telephoned for the entire stock of all chemists and hospital contract people in London, which arrived throughout the two days in an interminable procession – culminating in the distinction of being prayed for in church, completely dispersed all symptoms, and when the retinue, with the mysterious black bags, arrived – there was nothing for them to do.  They were amazed, however, and declared him a puzzle to science, so he is to be X-rayed.  I have given you a great many details but feel they fall upon sympathetic ground as you have had so much experience of doctors, haven’t you?

Thanking you again so much, Very sincerely yours, Christine Sickert”.’

 In 1907 Gray went painting in France with Wilson Steer and Fred Brown. They spent several months at Montreuil-sur-Mer which was popular with English landscape painters of the time. There is an amusing comment about Steer and his attitude to all things foreign:

‘Our visit to Montreuil was the last time Steer ever painted out of England.  He said that when abroad he was a foreigner, and he did not like foreigners!’

Gray decided to visit America but before doing so he painted a portrait of his Mother. He did not think highly of his work and hid it away, which was typical of his lack of confidence in his abilities. It was found by the painter Alfred Hayward when Gray was in America and it was sent to the Modern Portrait Painters Exhibition where, much to Gray’s surprise, it received good notices. In 1925 it was purchased for the Tate by the Chantrey Bequest.