The first London exhibition of the Grafton Galleries opened on February 18, 1893, at the newly established Mayfair venue on Grafton Street, with rooms extending toward Bruton Street. The opening mattered less for a single named artist than for the exhibition infrastructure it created. Over the next two decades, the Grafton became a major London platform for commercial, society, and avant-garde display. It later hosted Paul Durand-Ruel's 1905 Impressionist exhibition and Roger Fry's two Post-Impressionist exhibitions of 1910 and 1912, events that helped shift British encounters with modern French painting. The February 18 opening therefore marks the start of a venue that became an important hinge between the late Victorian art market and modernist exhibition culture.
The gallery became one of London's key gateways for Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.