Identity:

Edward John Gregory was a genre and portrait painter, as well as an illustrator.

Life:

Gregory entered the drawing office of the P&O Steamship Company, but, deciding to become an artist, studied at the Royal College of Art and at the Royal Academy Schools. He was involved in the decoration of the V&A, and was employed as an illustrator for The Graphic from 1871 to 1875. He visited the Continent and in 1882 stayed in Italy.

Gregory was a member of The Arts Club from 1877 to 1909. He was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters in 1883, in the same year that he was elected an associate of the R.A. He was accepted as a full member in 1898 on the strength of his Boulter's Lock: Sunday Afternoon (1898; Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight). In 1891 he was elected an associate of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colour and in 1896 he became a full member, being elected its President in 1898. He was also named an honourary member of the Royal Miniature Society in 1896.

Walter Dowdeswell, recalling his visit to the R.A. in 1872, where he saw JW's Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother (YMSM 101), described Gregory's The Mouse as 'a charming thing' (#08699). However, Thomas Way, writing to JW in May 1880, was rather disparaging about Gregory's works on display in the Grosvenor Gallery in that year (#06082).

In 1882 both Gregory and JW signed a petition to The Arts Club committee requesting that, during the sitting of Parliament, Parliamentary and General Telegraphic dispatches should be sent to the Club (#13336). Gregory was amongst those proposed invitees to a dinner organised by W. C. Symons to congratulate JW on becoming an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Munich, a dinner which was to be held at the Criterion in Piccadilly on 1 May 1889 (#05636).

Bibliography:

Annual Register, London, 1909, p. 128; Bénézit, E., Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, 8 vols, Paris, 1956-61; Wood, Christopher, Dictionary of Victorian Artists, Woodbridge, 1971; Johnson, J., and Anna Gruetzner, Dictionary of British Artists 1880-1940, Woodbridge, 1980.