Beaux Arts Gallery Beaux Arts Gallery Beaux Arts Gallery, London, England, founded in 1923 and closed in 1965, was known as a preeminent center for promoting avant-garde art. Founded and operated by portrait sculptor Frederick Lessore in 1923, the gallery was run by his wife Helen Lessore, a painter, until it closed in 1965. Prominent exhibitions at the gallery included: the first solo exhibition by Christopher Wood; one of the first exhibitions of Barbara Hepworth and her husband John Skeaping, the first solo exhibition of Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Beaux Arts Gallery also became associated with the Kitchen Sink School (and later
Barbara Hepworth her large-scale bronzes. Her eldest son, Paul, was killed on 13 February 1953 in a plane crash while serving with the Royal Air Force in Thailand. A memorial to him, "Madonna and Child", is in the parish church of St Ives. Exhausted, in part from her son's death, Hepworth travelled to Greece with her good friend Margaret Gardiner in August 1954. They visited Athens, Delphi, and many of the Aegean Islands. When Hepworth returned to St Ives from Greece in August 1954, she found that Gardiner had sent her a large shipment of Nigerian guarea hardwood. Although she received only