Gregory had a deep regard for all forms of artistic expression. This feeling was doubtless fed by the increasing importance of design in the business of Lund Humphries, but it was also rooted in Gregory’s own family background. The painter and sculptor
Ernest Sichel was among his cousins, and his elder brother, Edward Gregory (1880–1955), was a talented amateur artist whose work was regularly shown at the Bradford Art Society’s Spring Exhibitions. In the 1920s Gregory began collecting drawings, prints, paintings and sculpture; initially his taste seems to have been relatively conventional, but quite quickly he developed what was then a rare appreciation for contemporary British art. Ernest Sichel was close to
William Rothenstein and his brothers
Albert and Charles Rutherston, and Gregory mixed with their Bradford circle. Charles Rutherston was not an artist but a passionate admirer of art and patron of artists who assembled what, according to
Lawrence Haward, "art-lovers in this country have long recognised to be the very best private collection of modern English art in the country". In 1925 Rutherston donated the collection to
Manchester City Gallery because he felt it selfish to keep it to himself. Rutherston’s focus and philosophy were to be mirrored in Gregory’s own collecting habits, though he lacked the fortune Rutherston had made in business. In 1923 Rutherston introduced Gregory to
Henry Moore and there began a lifelong friendship between the two men. Gregory became an important patron of Moore, buying his work at a time when, as Moore later recalled, "I was an unknown sculptor and there were very few, less than half a dozen, collectors of modern sculpture in this country... The debt that I owe him is enormous". Among Gregory’s other early enthusiasms were the paintings of
Matthew Smith and
Vivian Pitchforth, and in the 1930s and 1940s his purchases and practical support promoted the careers of artists who were yet to establish themselves, including
Ben Nicholson,
Kenneth Armitage,
Lynn Chadwick,
Reg Butler,
Victor Pasmore,
Eduardo Paolozzi,
Barbara Hepworth,
Graham Sutherland and others of whom, said
Jane Drew, "the list is endless". Eager that work he appreciated should reach a wider audience, he donated examples to galleries, supported public exhibitions, and promoted publication in photographic form. In 1933 he shared the cost of a Sheffield exhibition of work by contemporary Yorkshire artists. In the following year he extended the credit that enabled
Anton Zwemmer to publish the first book on Henry Moore, and in 1938 he was instrumental in arranging a showing at Leeds of
Picasso’s preparatory sketches for
Guernica. In 1933, having relocated Lund Humphries’ London office to 12 Bedford Square in
Bloomsbury, Gregory opened a small exhibition gallery in the basement, used by
Man Ray as the venue for his only London exhibition and subsequently as his studio. In 1939 Lund Humphries’ publication of
Frank Lloyd Wright’s
An Organic Architecture established the firm as a leader in the cause of modernism, confirmed in 1944 by its lavishly illustrated
Henry Moore: Sculpture and Drawings. Production of the latter was considered to be a commercially daring investment in the work of a single living artist, but its success led to publication of what became a
catalogue raisonné of Moore’s work (six volumes on his sculpture and seven on his drawings). It was also followed by the firm’s launch of a series of similar monographs on
Paul Nash, Nicolson, Hepworth and
Naum Gabo. In 1946 he presented thirty-two pictures (including six
Pitchforths) to Manchester City Gallery, and in the following year, together with
Peter Watson,
Herbert Read and
Roland Penrose, he founded the
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) to provide a London centre for experimental work in art, music, film and drama. He was honorary treasurer of ICA until his death, serving on its management committee and assisting with its financing. In the 1950s Gregory was honorary secretary of the
Contemporary Art Society and made purchases in support of the Society’s objective of placing contemporary pictures in public collections. He was always a generous lender of items from his own collection: in 1941 five of his Moores were on loan to
Temple Newsam; in 1943 numerous of his paintings hung at the International Youth Centre in Pont Street; in 1953 Wakefield City Art Gallery had from him a
Modigliani drawing, two
Georges Braque oils, a Picasso engraving, an
André Derain landscape, a Nicholson, one of Moore’s "shelter drawings", and
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva’s
Paris. == The Gregory Fellowships ==