Stewart Gray

Alexander Stewart Gray (17 May 1862 – 13 April 1937)

Alexander Stewart Gray became a solicitor in Edinburgh where he was involved in the flotation of companies on the Stock Market, including the Provost Oats Company, a well-known company at the time. He mismanaged some family finances, and his mother lost all her personal income. He abandoned his work as a solicitor - perhaps being disbarred for embezzlement - and took to politics.

Stewart Gray leader of Hunger Marchers. Illustrated London News 10 October 1908, scanned from family album.

Gray was the originator of the "back-to-the-land movement" in the UK. The slogans associated with him were "Link Idle Land to Idle Labour; Free the Land, and you Free the People; Landlordism is Present-day SLAVERY".

8 Ormonde Terrace Stewart Gray, and wife (centre), appear in William Roberts' The Toe Dancer, 1914. Shortly before the start of the First World War, Gray took over 8 Ormonde Terrace in London, a largish house which overlooks Primrose Hill and is immediately to the north of Regent's Park. Gray is sometimes described as "squatting" John's involvement is confirmed in his letters, where he describes the idea of using 8 Ormonde Terrace as a centre for artists as a "scheme" with a "committee" of which he was asked to be the leader, a position he refused. John painted a portrait of Gray, entitled "Interpretation of Author", which was the picture of the year at the Royal Academy.

The young William Roberts also lived at Ormonde Terrace, and Gray appears twice in Roberts's 1914 drawing The Toe Dancer which, according to the catalogue of Roberts's 1965 Tate Gallery retrospective, was inspired by the dances performed by Gray's wife there. Mrs Gray is the contorted figure in the centre of the drawing. The Toe Dancer is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum. In an essay published posthumously, Roberts remembered that "At the rear of the house on a level with the first floor landing was a small glass conservatory, that Stuart had filled with hay almost to the roof, on which he slept fully dressed." Augustus John described Gray as "a dear old humorist with a passion for vegetables". Hale had been Augustus John's secretary after moving to London in 1917 and probably met Gray through John. While still in London, Gray would visit the Harlequin Club and offer to draw customers' portraits for pennies. He was buried in pauper's grave, but the Gray family and others raised money for a tombstone. Photograph of the grave of Stewart Gray at Ashingdon, scanned from family album.