Greg Ladd founded Cross Gate Gallery in 1975. He started out specializing in equine-themed paintings and sculptures, and the collection has since grown to include other sporting- and nature-themed artwork. Through his travels, Ladd has become friends with and represented numerous contemporary artists of England, Ireland and throughout Europe, as well as artists in the United States.
Cross Gate Gallery has been located in a stately home on East Main Street for decades, and the Ladd family inhabited a portion of the house. Ladd’s four children grew up with the gallery and would help out when needed. Two of the younger Ladds now work full-time for Cross Gate. Catherine Ladd Kenneally runs communications and administration. Field Ladd works in acquisitions and research. Later this month, the gallery will move to a new downtown location. Business Lexington spoke with Ladd about the gallery and his work with the equine art world.
What led you to start Cross Gate Gallery?
I worked at a high-end antique shop in high school called The Villager Gift Shop. It had good quality paintings and sculptures. Then, from my parents’ home, I started doing framing, and I sold Paul Sawyer prints. Back in the day, Sawyer prints retailed for $20 and I could buy them for $10.
I got married in 1974, and through my friends, my wife’s friends, and friends of friends, I had enough clientele to move into a gallery space at 215 East High St. My wife and I knew I wanted to specialize in sporting art, primarily British sporting art, because there are a lot of good British equine sporting painters. So, we got out a map of London and found a name that sounded good: Cross Gate. It was a small gallery — probably 20-by 20-feet. We moved to a larger space across the street, and in 1998 we bought this building [509 East Main], which gave us much more gallery space. My wife is an interior designer. She had a few walls knocked out and did a beautiful restoration.
And now Cross Gate Gallery is moving to a new location?
We’re moving just around the corner onto Old Vine Street. It used to be Phil Dunn’s Cook Shop. It’s a great big, open room. We’re going to put in a few walls and figure out how we want to configure it. I’m confident we’ll get a lot more of our inventory on the walls. Where we are now, as beautiful as it is, about 40 percent of our inventory is stored in the basement, even after we put in sliding racks for artwork on the upper floor.
What was your approach to building your business?
I didn’t really have anybody to teach me the business. I had a good eye from the beginning for quality artwork, but I didn’t have much money to speak of. I started small and built up the business.
The gallery opened in 1975, and I went to England for the first time in 1978. One of the artists I primarily went to see was Peter Curling, who lived in Ireland. He’s a good painter and has become recognized as the best Irish sporting painter. I also went to Paris, where I had a contact.
In Paris I bought a big painting from my contact. Then I bought 10 commercial art posters at a Paris flea market. There I was, lugging around the painting, posters, a suitcase and a briefcase, traveling by train and boat back to England. A shipper packed it all up in one crate — paintings by Peter Curling, antique prints, maybe some paintings from auctions and the pieces from Paris — and sent it back here.
On another early trip, I went to an exhibition of the Society of Equestrian Artists in England. Through that I found and became friends with Thomas Coates, a wonderful painter. He was connected with the Federation of British Artists, which had the Royal Watercolour Society, The Pastel Society and The Royal Society of Portrait Painters under its umbrella. All these different societies are organized to find and give exposure to good artists, and by seeing their exhibits I got to see the best artwork coming out. By the early ’90s we had gotten a good stable of sporting painters and sculptors that we liked.
Working with a contemporary artist is a relationship that you build. It works great as long as they produce good paintings and I get them in front of the people who buy them. That’s the whole game.
I’ve got to go on the road because I’ve got to get the artwork in front of a whole lot of people to create demand. If you have a gallery and you wait for people to come see you, you’re going to die on the vine — especially specializing in equine art.
The 10th Annual Sporting Arts Auction is coming up. How did that develop?
We had done a sporting art auction, largely equestrian art, for Fasig-Tipton at Saratoga Race Course in New York in the late ’90s. At the time, I was on the road for six months a year gathering art inventory. My wife and I had four children and two dogs. We made some money and got in front of people with those auctions, but it was too much time on the road after a while. I have continued with exhibit space at Saratoga since that time.
Keeneland is an ideal venue for the Sporting Arts Auction because of the Keeneland Sales. Everyone comes to Kentucky because the best horses are at Keeneland. The first couple of years were hard because I was calling on old clients [artists] and asking them to sell with us through the auction, and all they were doing was culling and not giving us their best stuff. It’s gotten easier because people have heard about it and, with 10 years now, we’re the only game in town. Sotheby’s and Christie’s used to do specialized sporting arts sales, but they’ve since stopped.
Every year we hope to have a highlight. This year we’ve got four paintings by Sir Alfred Munnings. He’s considered the top sporting artist in this century. One of the paintings is a racing picture, and not that many racing pictures come on the market. This is a large one — a 35-by 50-inch canvas. Nothing like this has been seen at any other auction house in the past 20 years.