Consensus was certainly in short supply during the weeks that marked the run of an art exhibition that opened at the Grafton Galleries in Mayfair the day after the Court transitioned to half-mourning on 7 November. It was the realisation of Roger Fry’s scheme to display works by ‘the newest French painters’ he had mooted to Clive and Vanessa Bell in January. Throughout the summer and autumn, he had been braced for an outcry. He can’t have anticipated the seismic shock of what was to prove one of the most seminal shows in the history of modern art in Britain.
