Quick Facts
Biography
Abbott and Holder is an art gallery and dealership in London, England, that specialises in low-price, 19th- and 20th-century English paintings, watercolours, drawings and prints. The gallery has been located at 30 Museum Street, London WC1 since 1987.
The company was founded by and named after Robert Abbott, a former headmaster and a Quaker minister, and Eric Holder, a trainee accountant who had been a conscientious objector and ambulance driver in the First World War, and who was a lapsed Quaker. The pair first dealt art jointly in 1936. Robert retired on health grounds in 1959. In 1969, Anna Holder was also listed on the company's letterhead. Robert's nephew John Abbott (1937-2011), who had worked for the firm in the 1960s, became a partner in 1971. Eric Holder retired in 1981 and Philip Athill, an art history graduate and assistant at the gallery since 1979, and now the company's Managing Director, became a partner in 1984. John Abbott retired in 2001.
Before moving to Museum Street, the gallery occupied part of a house at 73 Castelnau, Barnes, which was also Robert Abbott's home.
As well as general sales, promoted with a monthly-updated "list", the gallery holds topical and artist-specific exhibitions, occasionally including living artists. In 1960, Eric Holder invited Reginald Gray to hold his first London solo exhibition at the gallery. In 1961, Gray pained Holder's portrait.
The gallery's clients have included the UK Government Art Collection and Abbott and Holder's near neighbour, the British Museum.
Abbott and Holder are members of the British Antique Dealers' Association.