Godfrey Pilkington (8 November 1918 – 8 July 2007) was a British

art dealer An art dealer is a person or company that buys and sells works of art, or acts as the intermediary between the buyers and sellers of art. An art dealer in contemporary art typically seeks out various artists to represent, and builds relationshi ...

, director and co-founder of the

Piccadilly Gallery The Piccadilly Gallery was an art gallery that operated from a number of addresses in London between 1953 and 2007. It was originally founded as the Pilkington Gallery in 1953 by Eve Pilkington and her husband Godfrey Pilkington, with a focus o ...

. Pilkington is remembered for his work at the Piccadilly Gallery and in the community of St. Helen's from where his family operated

Pilkington Glass Pilkington is a Japanese-owned glass-manufacturing company which is based in Lathom, Lancashire, United Kingdom. In the UK it includes several legal entities and is a subsidiary of Japanese company NSG Group. Prior to its acquisition by NSG ...

from 1826 to 2006. Together with his wife Eve and Christabel Briggs, Pilkington enjoyed over half a century of trade with the Piccadilly, avoiding the prevailing commercialism and the fashion for abstract art. He championed the works of neglected figurative artists, Art Nouveau and 19th- and 20th-century Symbolism. In December 2006 the Rainford Gallery in

St Helens, Merseyside St Helens () is a town in Merseyside, England, with a population of 102,629. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, which had a population of 176,843 at the United Kingdom Census 2001, 2001 Census. St Helens i ...

was renamed the Godfrey Pilkington art gallery after the gallerist. Pilkington and his wife closed the Piccadilly Gallery on Dover Street on 31 May 2007.

References

1918 births 2007 deaths Art dealers from London People from St Helens, Merseyside 20th-century English businesspeople {{UK-business-bio-stub