Roger Fry firmly believed that every work of art had references to the surrounding world of actual life. Paul Cézanne, whose works influenced the aesthetic development of many 20th-century artists and art movements, passed away on October 22, 1906. It took four long years before the term Post-Impressionism was coined and the French painter hailed as one of the greatest of the Post-Impressionists. The expression, Post-Impressionism was coined in 1910 by the British art critic and historian, Roger Eliot Fry (1866-1934), well-known for his incisive thought and perceptive critique, both backed by a thorough historical knowledge. Fry was also a respected teacher besides being a painter himself.

Born in London, Fry studied painting in Italy and his book on Giovanni Bellini (1430-1516), the genius who brought Venetian painting from provincial backwardness into the forefront of Renaissance and the mainstream of Western art – was published in 1899. His acquaintance with the work of Cézanne in 1906 is said to have changed the course of Fry’s life. He followed his interest with deeper study and published articles on the works of Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, and Vincent van Gogh.

On his return to London, Fry became associated with the Bloomsbury group, which had an assembly of English writers, philosophers, and artists. The group, which included the likes of E M Forster and Virginia Woolf, frequently met and debated many aesthetic and philosophical questions. Bertrand Russell, Aldous Huxley and T S Eliot also associated themselves sometimes with the group.

In November 1910, Fry organized for the Grafton Galleries the first of two painting exhibitions that were to revolutionize aesthetics in England. The uproar for ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists’ was incredible; it removed Fry from the ranks of traditional and academic critics and propelled him into the vanguard of art criticism. When the exhibition was being organised, Fry was advised against using the word ‘Expressionist’ to describe the work of Cézanne, Seurat, Gauguin, Matisse, van Gogh, and others. He declared, “Oh, let’s just call them Post-Impressionists; at any rate, they came after the Impressionists.” A second exhibition of a similar nature opened in October 1912 and cemented the term for posterity.

The show was a shock to the art world. Possibly, the fairest reflection came from a letter of British sculptor and graphic artist, Eric Gill to painter, Sir William Rothenstein “You are missing an awful excitement just now being provided for us in London, to wit, the exhibition of Post-Impressionists now at the Grafton Galleries. All the critics are tearing one another’s eyes out over it, and the sheep and goats are inextricably mixed up. The show quite obviously represents a reaction and transition, and so, if, like Fry, you are a factor in that reaction and transition, then you like the show. If, like MacColl and Robert Ross, you are inseparably connected with the things reacted against and the generation from which it is a transition, then you don’t like it.” The so-called ‘Post-Impressionism’ is said to have begun in 1886 whenFrench artist Georges Seurat (1859-91) exhibited his painting, ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’. It stands as an example of  ‘pointillism’ a technique in which tiny dots of colour are placed close together to create a richness not found in traditional painting techniques. Seurat created stiff, flat figures with simplified contours, endowing his composition with an air of symbolic permanence.

“In a hundred different ways, critics have tried to express a peculiar feeling which great works of art arouse,” wrote Fry, in one of his essays on Seurat.

In 1913, Fry organized a group of young artists into a collective called the Omega Workshops. The goal of the collective was to infuse the innovative aesthetic of Post-Impressionism into the design of everyday functional objects. Omega remained in operation until 1919. Fry continued to lecture, travel, and paint throughout his life. His legacy is a body of art criticism and theory that includes Vision and Design, Transformations, Cézanne, Henri Matisse and several other collections of lectures. In 1933 he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at Cambridge. Fry died in London on September 9, 1934 .