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Omega's decline

The utter indifference... of the public to what we have attempted has bought Omega to disaster. Roger Fry in a letter to Sir Michael Sadler, 1919 [8221.2.34] Despite Fry's commitment to Omega, throughout its six-year existence, it struggled to survive financially. A combination of inefficient techniques, expensive materials, and a lack of orders, as well as internal wranglings forced Omega to close in 1919. In addition, press coverage of the workshops had been mediocre from the start, a pattern which continued throughout Omega's existence. By this time Fry was the only original member still working regularly at Fitzroy Square as Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were now living at Charleston, and many of the other artists had moved on. In October 1913, Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells, Edward Wadsworth and Cuthbert Hamilton had left the workshops after a disagreement over the Omega contribution to the Ideal Home Exhibition.

Letter from Roger Fry to Michael Sadler discussing the collapse of Omega © Annabel Cole

They circulated a letter, known as the 'Round Robin', to shareholders and patrons of Omega, containing accusations against the company and in particular Roger Fry, and ridiculing the ideology and products of Omega. The letter announced their resignation from the group, a split ultimately leading to the formation of the rival decorative workshop Rebel Art Centre and the establishment of the Vorticist movement. Fry, realising that the Omega Workshops Ltd had come to an end held a clearance sale of stock in the summer of 1919 and 33 Fitzroy Square was cleared in September. Omega Workshops Ltd was officially liquidated on 24 July 1920. 'Round Robin' letter from disaffected Omega artists, criticizing Fry and Omega © Mrs G A Wyndam Lewis and the Estate of Wyndham Lewis by permission of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust (a registered charity)

Did you know? The Omega Workshops are referred to in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited. The extent to which the Omega workshops were known, and were seen as a defining feature of the period between 1910 and 1920, can be seen by the following extract from Brideshead Revisited, written twenty-five years after Omega's closure. Charles Ryder, the narrator, remembers the furnishings of his college room at Oxford as having included (along with a print of Van Gogh's Sunflowers): a screen, painted by Roger Fry with a Provençal landscape, which I had bought inexpensively when the Omega workshops were sold up. Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited Advertisement for the Omega Workshops closing down sale © Tate Archive, 2003