A groundbreaking exhibition in London during the winter of 1910-1911 forever transformed British attitudes toward modern art, sparking fierce controversy and laying the foundation for a cultural revolution. The exhibition "Manet and the Post-Impressionists," organized by critic Roger Fry at the Grafton Galleries, introduced British audiences to radical Continental artworks that would fundamentally alter the nation's artistic landscape. Virginia Woolf would later declare that "on or about December 1910, human character changed," referring to this pivotal moment when modernism crossed the English Channel.
The exhibition featured seemingly crude and anti-naturalistic works that shocked Victorian sensibilities and provoked violent reactions from critics and the public alike. Paintings by Matisse, Van Gogh, Manet, and Picasso - including Matisse's "Girl with Green Eyes," Van Gogh's "Wheatfield with Crows," Manet's "A Bar at the Folies-Bergère," and Picasso's "Portrait of Clovis Sagot" - were dismissed by critics as the "output of a lunatic asylum." The Pall Mall Gazette's critic delivered particularly harsh condemnation, while Robert Ross of The Morning Post declared the exhibition "of no interest except to the student of pathology and the specialist in abnormality."
Roger Fry, the visionary curator behind the exhibition, had discovered these revolutionary artists during his studies at Paris's prestigious Académie Julian in the early 1890s. He coined the term "Post-Impressionists" to describe these innovative Continental artists who captivated him. Woolf vividly remembered Fry at the Grafton Galleries, standing before the paintings and "plunging his eyes into them as if he were a humming-bird Hawkmoth hanging over a flower, quivering yet still." Despite the hostile reception, Fry remained convinced of the artworks' merit and significance.
Paris had been the epicenter of radical cultural innovation for thirty years before Fry's exhibition, beginning with the scandals surrounding Manet's "Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe" (1863) and "Olympia" (1865). The French capital's artistic ferment was fueled by anti-establishment sentiment inherited from the Revolution and the dramatic urban transformation under Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann. Poet Charles Baudelaire had provided theoretical foundation for this movement, arguing in his influential essays that contemporary existence possessed its own beauty and deserved artistic representation.
The violent British reaction to modern art reflected both institutional conservatism and acute social crisis in 1910. Unlike France, Britain's stronger conservative institutions, particularly the Royal Academy, had maintained firmer control over artistic production and discourse. The timing was particularly unfortunate, as Britain faced violent Suffragette protests, miners' strikes in South Wales, political upheaval over Lloyd George's "People's Budget," and Irish Home Rule agitation. Critics accused the avant-garde of promoting anarchism and threatening civilization's foundations.
Class anxiety also fueled opposition to modern art, as Fry astutely observed. While expertise in Old Masters required expensive education and leisure time, appreciating a Matisse demanded only natural sensibility. As Fry noted, "One could feel fairly sure that one's maid could not rival one in the former case, but might by a mere haphazard gift of Providence surpass one in the second." This democratization of artistic appreciation threatened established cultural hierarchies.
Despite initial hostility, the exhibition catalyzed British modernism's emergence. Young artists like Paul Nash and Dora Carrington attended against their instructor Henry Tonks's explicit warnings. Tonks, a dominant figure at London's Slade School, had gathered students and urged them to "listen to their sporting instincts and stay away." He declared, "I cannot teach what I don't believe in. I shall resign if this talk about Cubism does not cease; it is killing me."
The exhibition's impact on individual artists was profound and lasting. Carrington immediately transformed her appearance, cutting her long hair into a defiant bob and completely changing her artistic heroes from Victorians like Herkomer and Lord Leighton to Sickert, Augustus John, and especially Cézanne. Her brother recalled their mother's humiliation at these sudden changes, as she "now hardly dared to talk on the subject for fear of mispronouncing these strange names."
Following the exhibition's success, Fry became a dominant figure in British art, promoting modernism and helping it achieve mainstream acceptance. In 1913, he founded the Omega Workshops with fellow Bloomsbury artists Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, focusing on furniture, textiles, and household items. The briefly involved Wyndham Lewis left after a personality clash with Fry to establish the Vorticists, a dynamic group drawing inspiration from Cubism and Futurism that challenged assumptions about modern art's political orientation.
Paul Nash, though initially unmoved by the 1910 exhibition, was eventually drawn into modernism through his experiences as an official war artist. The new styles proved essential for expressing the horror and futility of trench warfare and the sense of unreality he felt at the front. His commitment to modernism deepened after the war, and he became a central figure in British Surrealism.
By 1939, when Woolf wrote Fry's biography, the transformation was complete. She noted the irony that "a great hospital is benefiting from a centenary exhibition of Cézanne's works, and the gallery is daily crowded with devout and submissive worshippers" - a stark contrast to the "violent emotions those pictures excited less than thirty years ago." The strange foreign names had indeed become permanent fixtures in British culture, now accompanied by unmistakably British ones in the radical new art movement that had taken root and flourished.
