by “I’ve always been in awe of this building,” says Paul Green, founder of the 60-something Halcyon Gallery, which sits among the high fashion shops of New Bond Street. Currently, across the spacious ground floor and airy basement, an exhibition of some of Andy Warhol’s most iconic lithographs and paintings – from portraits of Elizabeth II to reworkings of famous advertisements – is on display and is attracting a crowd. “I never wanted people to have to ring the doorbell to get in,” says Green, one of the art world’s most colorful characters. “We work hard on our shows and I want people to see them.”
Plus, as Green puts it, you never know who your potential buyer is. He casts his mind back to earlier days, when his gallery was above New Street Station in Birmingham. “One of our first successful sales was a small painting by LS Lowry of a scruffy man in jeans,” he says. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.”
It is a historic building: home to Cumann na Mínealaíne, a respected old dealer, from its foundation in 1876 until last year. When it became available, Green jumped, although it wasn’t long in coming. The Halcyon Gallery, now home to Gucci’s fancy new store, has been next door for over a decade, and started life in London around the corner, in nearby Bruton Street, back in 2002.
Both properties have seen some impressive visitors, including legendary music producer Jimmy Iovine and singer Bono. “He came to see the first Bob Dylan show we did, around 2006,” says Green of the U2 frontman. “He spent an hour walking around, singing Dylan’s favorite songs. Then he invited me to a concert he was playing that night.” Another visitor, Johnny Depp, joined the gallery as an artist. “He likes silk screen,” says Green. Depp’s Friends and Heroes series (think Bob Marley, Liz Taylor, Al Pacino done in a naïve style) is for sale through Green’s print business, Castle Fine Art, and it’s not cheap.
As for Warhol, Green met him in New York in 1986, not long before he died. “He had done Cowboys and Indians,” he says of a set of silkscreens now on display downstairs. “He was hanging out with Mariel Hemmingway.” Other exceptional works on display include Warhol’s original portrait of Pelé, which the artist presented directly to the footballer, and which Green managed to acquire. “The thing is, we’re not just selling Warhol, we’re collecting Warhol,” explains Green, who has no work on consignment. All pieces for sale belong to the gallery.
Paul Green’s first floor office is handsome, where a large semi-circular window lets in plenty of light as well as the sound of cheesy disco booming from the pedal rickshaws pulling up at the traffic lights below. (“You certainly have my opinion on that,” grimaces Green.) On the table is a platter of exquisite choux buns from Marchesi, the Prada-owned patisserie in nearby Mount Street. They are the size of a 2p piece and filled with pistachio cream.
Green is as elegant – his father descended from several generations of nobility before going into business with his son – as are the walls above his desk. There is a 1932 Picasso, a delicate watercolor of a bather; and Renoir 1909 of a wonderful country scene. But his remit is to mix the old and the new. “All living artists study dead artists, you can’t separate the two,” says Green.
To prove his point, he opened the new space last year with a state-of-the-art presentation by Dominic Harris, an artist based in London who creates huge screen-based works, huge moving chandeliers and fully immersive environments. “It took me seven years to get him on board,” says Green. “Finally I said to him, how big can you dream? Then let’s do it! When we opened, the show got literally millions of TikTok views. “
Green’s artistic career was far from inevitable. Brought up in Birmingham, he left school after his A levels and went to work on a kibbutz in Israel. A brief stint at an agricultural college in Cirencester followed and Green did not like it. “It was the worst place I’ve ever been – and there were no girls there!” he exclaims. “I failed a soil test and left.” It was a casual job for Canada, selling prints to portrait painter Pietro Annigoni, that lured him in. “Annigoni was in Florence then, and he was the maestro. I started to get interested in art,” says Green. One of the last royal painters of the 20th century, Annigoni painted the famous portrait of Elizabeth II clad in a navy riding cape, on a white horse. When Annigoni’s business began to fail, Green decided to set up a gallery in Birmingham.
Now Green travels the world, building large collections, visiting clients and museums interested in the work he has to offer. Last year he installed a large sculpture of Bob Dylan at Chateau La Coste, the extraordinary art park in the South of France developed by hotelier Paddy McKillen (the man who made the Connaught and Claridges where they are today.) Dylan’s greatest art is work,” Green explains. “A train car, created from a load of salvaged scrap metal, takes him back to where he grew up in Minnesota.”
But other activities keep him just as busy. “I’m a big sports fan,” admits Green. “I took my son to the Rugby World Cup in 2019. The first time I’ve been to Japan.” He also works hard raising money for the Duke of Edinburgh Award. “He was one of the great men of the world,” he says of Prince Philip, although he speaks equally positively of the new holder. “He used to hit me when I was talking. I was called the arm-twister!”
With the business expanding to New York and Los Angeles, there is no letting up in Green’s life. “We’re converting an existing space on West Broadway,” he says, “and building 10,000 square feet in Los Angeles, right off Rodeo Drive.” Meanwhile in the London gallery, a new Bob Dylan show will be followed by Warhol, and later in the year by one of our best printmakers, David Hockney.
“I don’t want to give too much away,” says Green. But he would love for you to come and have a look. “It doesn’t matter how much money people have,” he says. “It’s all about the art.”
How to invest in art
Collect tips from Paul Green
You can start by buying good quality prints; it is still the real thing. Durer’s prints are extremely valuable; Picasso made prints. Warhol is, of course, the master, and now Hockney.
Go to museums, visit exhibitions and start working out what you really like. The Museum’s posters make excellent early acquisitions, and some go on to become quite valuable, if it is a significant show.
Raise your children! It’s never too early to start looking at art, and children often react in such a spontaneous way. When we had our Dominic Harris programme, of screen-based and immersive works, the children who came were fearless and loved it. They were always the first to interact with the works.
When you look online, you open up a whole world of possibilities, but there’s nothing like the moment of interaction you have when you visit a gallery. It is a physical art and best seen in real life.
In some public galleries, the docents are well trained and can talk you through the work on display. In private galleries, feel free to ask for anything. The entire team is there to help you better understand the art. Of course, you can also ask for the price, but that can be irrelevant. And don’t be sorry if a gallery would rather not say it.
