page_title: Frank Coombs (artist)
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Coombs (artist) / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, late 1924
context_page_description: Frank Mundy Coombs was an English painter, architect and art dealer.
context_section_description: Frank Coombs qualified as an architect and  worked  at the Hampshire  County Council. For two years, he lived in the island of Sark and there met Ala Story, while Story was on a vacation, and followed her back to London, where Story owned the Storran Gallery.
  Coombs was responsible for the progressive turn of the Storran Gallery. Originally selling woodcuts and greeting cards, when Coombs joined the gallery in 1935 he organized his first show, a show that completely changed the future of the business. After that first show, Coombs, together with Eardley Knollys and Ala Story, exhibited works by Pavel Tchelitchew, Ivon Hitchens, Frances Hodgkins, Christopher Wood and Victor Pasmore. When Story sold her share to Knollys, Knollys and Coombs started to exhibit works by Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Maurice Utrillo, Glyn Philpot (Philpot painted Coombs' portrait), Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Gauguin, Maurice de Vlaminck, André Derain and Amedeo Modigliani. With Coombs and Knollys, the Storran Gallery was considered a prominent avant-garde location. For this progressive turn, the Storran Gallery is listed as one of the most important gallery in Art History.
  Coombs was part of The London Group. He was among the young artists nicknamed the Cork Street Front, and exhibited with them in 1940 at the Special War-time Show hosted by the New Burlington Galleries.
  Coombs and Knollys befriended many clients like Lady Ottoline Morrell, Duncan Grant and Graham Sutherland.
caption: Eardley Knollys by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, late 1924
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