There are some empty spaces on the walls at Fry Fine Art these days. With a collection nearing 2,000 paintings, Peterborough collector Stan Fry keeps his three-story gallery jam-packed. But, he explained during a tour of his space last week, the blank spaces are a bare necessity, as some of his paintings are on the way to the Whistler House Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts, for an upcoming exhibit.
First, though, they’ll make a stop at the Waterhouse, where they’ll be on display through March 19, to give locals a chance to view the exhibit.
Fry said that removing art from his collection and displaying it publicly benefits both the viewer and the collector.
“Sharing it, putting it in museums sort of broadcasts the fact that these artists existed and what they were doing,” Fry said. “It increases the value of the art, especially with this big exhibit we’re going to do. It’s a significant investment on our part to do it, we pay to do this. But you also learn a lot in the process of doing this, about what you already own or maybe what you should collect. It’s a little more intellectual than it might appear to be.”
Indeed, Fry explained that the story behind the painting, the interconnections of various artists, and in the case of the upcoming exhibit, the subject matter, are what draws him to certain artwork. An Emile Gruppe painting, for instance, might see 30 people bidding at an auction.
“They’re so much in demand, there’s already all this research that’s been done about them, it’s fun to do something where other people haven’t been there and hopefully you can significantly increase the value of them by doing this,” Fry said.
In contrast, one of his favorite paintings is a work by William Kaula, picked up at an auction in Texas for a mere $2,500 (some of the pieces in his collection fetch $18-20,000, he said, and a few can get as much as $75,000).
“There just wasn’t anyone there bidding on it, Fry said. “They don’t know who he is, he’s a New England painter.”
Fry would commission a book on the history of Kaula, and his wife, Lee, who were both renowned painters who summered in New Ipswich.
“One of the reasons we do these books is to educate people about that artist, and hopefully communicate that to other people and maybe create other collectors,” he said.
The upcoming exhibit is called American Impressionism: Harbor Scenes.
“[It’s] mostly scenes of docks or boating on waterways here in New England,” Fry said. “You’ll find a lot of it is Gloucester, Portsmouth, but there’s some smaller waterways that are in the show as well.”
The show will feature works by Gruppe, Paul Bernard King, Jane Peterson and Abraham Rosenthal, among others.
For those who wish to view the art in Peterborough, it will be at the Waterhouse through March 19, with an opening reception Sunday at 4 p.m.
After that, it travels to the Whistler House Museum in Lowell, where it will be on display from April 1 to May 24, with an opening reception on April 8.