Biography
Ronald Alley (b. Bristol, UK 1926 - d. 1999) was Keeper of the Modern Collection at the Tate Gallery for 21 years (1965-86), having started his career there in 1951 under the directorship of Sir John Rothenstein (1901-1992). He wrote the catalogue for its Modern Foreign Collection (1981) -although he is not credied as the author - and was also an advocate for expanding the gallery’s holdings of modern American art. He curated retrospectives of Paulo Vezelay, William Roberts, Victor Pasmore, Barbara Hepworth, Patrick Heron, Graham Sutherland and Francis Bacon as well as compiling the latter's catalogue raisonné. He also wrote monographs on the Douanier Rousseau, Ben Nicholson and William Scott and on Picasso's Three Dancers (1967) whose acquisition was supported by the Contemporary Art Society. On his retirement the exhibition Forty Years of Modern Art was held at the Tate Gallery in his honour.
Alley initially studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. He had volunteered as a Bevin Boy, working as a miner and a fellow miner of his was the son of the art historian Rudolf Wittkower (1901-1971) - which may have influenced his decision to pursue this field of study. Throughout his career Alley also advised the Ulster Museum, Belfast, in the 1960s, and for more than 40 years, on the post-1850 works on paper acquisitions for the the Cecil Higgins Gallery, Bedford. He married the sculptor Anthea Oswell twice, in 1955, and in 1993, on her deathbed; they had two daughters, Fiammetta and Melissa, both of whom are painters.