Ray Hughes and Evan Hughes to close their trailblazing Sydney art gallery at the end of the year

The Hughes Gallery in Surry Hills will close at the end of the year, knocking out a cornerstone of Sydney’s artistic life

Mar97- Gallery director Ray Hughes with Archibald art entry of the same name. /paintings /artworks

THE Hughes Gallery in Surry Hills will close at the end of the year, knocking out a cornerstone of Sydney’s artistic life.

Previously known as Ray Hughes Gallery after its flamboyant founder, the gallery’s origins date to 1969 when it opened in Brisbane.

Ray Hughes moved his gallery to Sydney in 1985, and into its current warehouse location in Devonshire St in 1988.

In 2012 Hughes’ son Evan became a joint director of the gallery. He had spent much of his boyhood travelling overseas on buying trips with his father.

Evan Hughes at The Hughes Gallery in Surry Hills

Evan Hughes confirmed that the gallery will close at year’s end. His father health has declined in recent months.

The gallery discovered and promoted some of the finest artists in Australia, including the great landscape painter William Robinson and the contemporary artist Del Kathryn Barton — although those two have since moved to other gallery representation.

But many leading artists have remained loyal to Hughes, including Lucy Culliton, Joe Furlonger and Michael Bell.

“I was with the gallery for 22 years,” Bell said. “I think perhaps Joe (Furlonger) and myself are the longest serving.”

Bell said Ray Hughes was never conservative in his tastes and was often well ahead of everyone else. Hughes had bought and promoted contemporary Chinese art before it became a fad, for example.

“At various times it was very exciting being part of that gallery,” Bell said.

Artist Michael Bell at The Hughes Gallery

“One of my great memories is to sit down with Ray upstairs over a cup of tea and look through all these incredible art catalogues.”

Lucy Culliton, 16 years in the Hughes stable, said being with Ray and Evan Hughes “was like the public service — I thought I was there for life”.

“Basically my life as an artist was with Ray,” Culliton said.

Artist Lucy Culliton at The Hughes Gallery

“He looked after me. He loved what I did. The day he first came down to have a look at my work you could see his eyes on everything in the room. That keenness never stopped.

“He was happiest when you bought a bunch of new paintings in — happier than when you made a sale.”

Ray Hughes was famous in Sydney for throwing knockabout lunches in which artists, journalists, writers and actors mixed, talked, drank and argued — with the affable and opinionated Ray Hughes beaming at the head of a groaning table.

“It’s the end of an era,” one Sydney artist said when told of the gallery’s closure.

Artist Joe Furlonger at Ray Hughes Gallery in 2003.