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| Roberts Gallery |
"A magnificent duty falls on us: history elects us to preserve the precious treasure it bequeaths."
(Paul-Émile Borduas)
For the past 75 years the Wildridge family has owned and operated the oldest and one of the most prestigious art galleries in Canada. They celebrated their diamond jubilee on Saturday June 10, 2023, in their new location at 631 Dupont Street in Toronto, Ontario. Paul Wildridge (the gallery Director) and his wife Charlene (the gallery Administrator) hosted the event, along with their daughter Allie, their son Tom, and their graphic designer and social media specialist Taya Dekker.
Paul started working at the gallery in 1978, with Charlene joining him full-time in 2000. Allie and Tom have been part of the family business for over a decade as well, with Allie starting in 2012, and Tom joining two years later. Under Paul’s wise guidance, and informed by Charlene’s acute attention to detail, Allie and Tom currently share the responsibly for both preserving and promoting their vast collection of Historic and Contemporary Canadian art, and for supporting and representing some of the very best artists in Canada (and the world).
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| Celebrating 75 Years |
They used their annual Sketches Exhibition of Canadian Historical art to rightly showcase their own history. Their many friends and patrons that attended the show experienced a retrospective exhibition that served as a commentary on the historical context, the contemporary interest, and future significance of Roberts Gallery in Canadian art history.
Much can be said about their contribution to this history. Indeed, a book could (and should) be written about it. Let the following two examples suffice (there are many). First, everyone knows and admires the reputation that Roberts Gallery has for exhibiting Canadian landscape painting through their close association with and support of the Group of Seven. But what might be less well known is the role they played (and continue to play) in the history of Canadian abstract painting.
Roberts Gallery is the sine qua non of the success of the Painter’s Eleven precisely because they were the first gallery in Canada and the world to exhibit their work back in 1954. That show put Canadian abstract painting on the map. American art critics like Clement Greenberg took notice and were impressed enough to take it seriously. While Greenberg was distastefully wrong to criticize Kazuo Nakamura as being “just a bit too captured by oriental ‘taste’” to be of any abstract use, he was decisively right to recognize Nakamura's significance and the contribution he made to modern art in Canada. We have Roberts Gallery to thank for making this kind of international recognition possible.
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| Kazuo Nakamura | Forest, 1953 |
The second example concerns the circumstances that drew the famous French mime artist and actor Marcel Marceau into the gallery back in early 1970. Marceau was at the O’Keefe Center in Toronto for a week’s worth of mime performance shows. One day while he was on a long walk he ended up in front of Roberts Gallery. He looked into the window and saw a number of Japanese Kabuki actor pieces on display. Marceau went into the gallery and was blown away by them. He asked Jack Wildridge (the Director of the gallery) who the artist was, and Jack told him that it was John Gould. Marceau then asked him if there would be any way he could get in touch with the artist. Jack set up a meeting between the two of them.
Marceau commissioned Gould to go to New York later that spring and draw him from backstage for eight days in a row while he was performing. Two years later (1972), the gallery had an exhibition of the sketches Gould made of that run of shows in New York. The significance here is that the gallery brought Marceau in, and Gould's art sought him out. Marceau had to do something in response. We have Roberts Gallery to thank for introducing these two artists, for the impact they had on each other's lives, and for the art they produced.
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| John Gould | Caligrapher, 1990 |
The history of Roberts Gallery began back in 1842 when William Pell, a gilder from London, England, established the gallery’s first location on King Street West in Toronto. That was 180 years ago. In 1870 a fine art dealer from England named Samuel E. Roberts (after whom the gallery is named) acquired the gallery from William Pell. For the next 78 years the Roberts family ran the gallery until 1948 when Paul’s grandfather Sidney Wildridge, along with Paul's father Jack Wildridge, acquired the gallery from the Roberts family and reopened it at 759 Yonge Street in Toronto. In 1961 they moved the gallery to 641 Yonge Street. After many years of doing business there, they eventually moved it to its present location on Dupont Street (saving the best location till last – but more on interior design later).
You cannot appreciate the significance of this history without mentioning the role that A.J. Casson played in its development. After Sydney Wildridge sadly passed away in the mid-1950s, Jack Wildridge took all that he had learned as Sydney’s young apprentice and applied it to running the gallery as a relatively young man in his late 20s. He had a level of ambitious maturity beyond his years that drew many of the Toronto artists of the time into the gallery’s orbit. Chief among these artists was Casson who had already come into his own as an artist of note. Casson was not only the founding member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour in 1925, but also joined the Group of Seven painters in 1926 to replace Franz Johnston who had just resigned. Casson was 30 years Jack’s senior when they first met. And yet this age difference did not prevent Casson from seeing something significant in him, not only as a shrewd businessman, but also as a devoted family man.
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| A.J. Casson | Church at Rosenthal, 1955 |
Not long after their first meeting Casson decided to entrust his career to Jack Wildridge by making Roberts Gallery his exclusive representative. This was a decisive stamp of approval both for the business and for Jack. Casson’s decision more than paid off for him. His first solo exhibition at Roberts Gallery in 1959 was the first of 11 more solo shows of his work (along with one more posthumous show in 1998 to mark the centenary of his birth). During this time Casson introduced Jack to other important artists, directors of public institutions, and influential art critics, thereby using his considerable influence to solidify Roberts Gallery’s already established business reputation within the art world.
Throughout the years Casson and his wife Margaret Alexandria Petry became very close friends with the Wildridge family. To thank them for their friendship and support, Casson designed the Wildridge Coat of Arms and presented it to Jack and his wife Jennie as a surprise Christmas gift in 1972. The coat of arms remains as the gallery logo branding to this day, both in their signage and in their letterhead. It serves as a reminder that Roberts Gallery cannot be understood apart from its history.
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| Coat of Arms |
What is significant about this history, and why does it matter? Andy Warhol was perceptive enough to know that "good art is good business" (as he put it). What is good business? Through their own purposely understated and unspectacular hard work of running a successful art gallery for the past 75 years, the Wildridge family has given us a unique answer to this question: good business is family business. This is “the Wildridge way,” as Allie wisely reminds the family every so often when they discuss whether they should possibly change their successful business strategy in response to the latest consumer trends.
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| Jack and Jennie Wildridge |
Understanding the kind of man Jack Wildridge was gets to the heart of their strategy. I asked Charlene to describe him to me. She said that Jack was a gentleman, a very admired person, a very honest person, and someone you could trust. “I believe that Casson saw this in him,” Charlene went on to say. “He saw this young man, he got it, and he understood business.” Like father like son.
Artists, art dealers, and clientele alike put their trust in Paul Wildridge for the same reason Casson put his trust in Jack. And like his father before him, Paul is a successful businessman because he is a devoted family man. They say you know you have lived a successful life when your children want to spend time with you when they get older. Success, indeed.
Paul's life embodies a philosophy of art that is the product of the values he received from his parents and siblings, values that he has passed on to his own family. What is this philosophy of art that has made the Wildridge way so successful? It is the philosophy of serious generosity: art worthy of the name is generous enough in that it invites you in to admire its beauty, but it is serious enough in that it demands something of you. And in this case, what is true of the art is true of the gallery.
When you walk into an art gallery you might feel what the poet Philip Larkin once described as an “awkward reverence.” Where there is art, there is reverence. No doubt. But in the case of Roberts Gallery there is this difference: the reverence is not awkward, but awakening. And this reverent sense of awakening is the result of how serious generosity informs every aspect of this gallery, including its interior design.
When the gallery moved to its present location on Dupont street in 2020, Charlene designed a space that is based on the important architectural distinction between a building and a dwelling. A building is a space that you do things in, but a dwelling is a home where you become someone. While all dwellings are buildings, not all buildings are dwellings. Roberts Gallery is a building that is a dwelling. It is domestically designed around the art that it displays, expertly hung on its clean white walls by Allie (who has turned the functional technique of hanging art into an art form).
Charlene's decision to design the gallery in this way is based on the aesthetic she used to design her own home. She told me that it is designed around a single painting by the Canadian abstract painter Paul-Émile Borduas. I asked Charlene what it is about this painting that deserves such attention. She talked about its beauty as a reason for its centrality, as well as its meaningful history with their family. She also talked about the importance of Borduas' role in the avant-garde Automatiste movement in Quebec, and how the Refus Global manifesto he authored in 1948 signaled the dawn of the Quiet Revolution. However, the influence that she takes from Borduas is less political, and far more personal. For her Borduas represents what can be called a Quieter Revolution that transpires within you in response to art that is before you. In this sense, Marcel Marceau was a silent revolutionary.
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| Paul-Émile Borduas | Frou, Frou, Aigu, 1956 |
The aesthetics of Roberts Gallery is minimalism with a mission: it creates a dwelling that generously directs your attention to the art that it serves, in order to prepare you for what it seriously demands. Art demands your active attention and your existential reaction. The point is to reverently awaken you, to gently change you, to make you better than you were before you encountered it, and to inspire you to have the same kind of artistic influence in your dealings with others (family and friends alike). You need a home to help you become someone, and the gallery is designed with this in mind. It is a domestic family dwelling, the very thing we all want our homes to be.
Whether you are an artist who is represented by the gallery, a collector who is advised by the gallery, or (in my case) a fine art advisor who works with the gallery, everyone is made to feel like they are part of their extended family. Roberts Gallery is a second home for us. There is even a backyard outside of Paul's office, complete with a table, chairs, and an umbrella!
At the end of a very enjoyable discussion with Paul in his office, filled with lovely family anecdotes and informed artistic commentary, I asked Paul the following question: “What is the lasting legacy of Roberts Gallery?” Without hesitation he answered: “Respect.” Paul is not given to false modesty. He knows that he is the pater familias. And he is as confident as he is humble about his place in Canadian art history. His Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Dealers Association of Canada in 2018 is a testament to his faithfulness in carrying out the magnificent duty that has fallen on him and his family: to preserve the precious treasure of art that history has bequeathed to them, and to us. Roberts Gallery has earned our respect.
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| The Wildridge Family |
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