Eardley Knollys Eardley Knollys 1902 – 1991 Works from the Studio Estate 2016 www.messums.com 28 Cork Street, London W1S 3NG Telephone: +44 (0)20 7437 5545 Eardley Knollys “Despite all my interest in other peoples’ pictures, I never knew I could paint. It was After the War, Knollys moved to Dorset, where he joined Eddy Sackville-West, Desmond Shawe- after the war, when I was going abroad with Edward Le Bas…“Of course, you’re Taylor and later Raymond Mortimer in forming a salon at Crichel House, near Wimborne. This small, going to paint too”, he said... although I said I couldn’t. Ten days later, when he left Georgian rectory became a cultural haven, where guests included Sybil Colefax, Anthony Asquith, me to go to Lucca to meet Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, I was unable even to Graham Sutherland, Lord Berners, Nancy Mitford, Benjamin Britten, Henry Reed, Rose Macaulay, sleep for thinking about painting pictures. [But] I never looked back.” Laurie Lee, Ben Nicolson, Cecil Day-Lewis and Graham Greene. By 1958, Knollys resigned from the National Trust to devote himself to painting. He moved from Long It was perhaps inevitable that Eardley Knollys become an artist, albeit rather late in life. A scion Crichel to Slade Hill House, near Petersfield in Hampshire. He shared this modest former hunting of minor aristocracy, after studying at Christ Church, Oxford, he inherited estates whose income lodge with Mattei Radev, a Bulgarian picture framer, with whom he shared a close, platonic freed him to pursue a love of watercolour. His early love of prints and drawings possibly compelled friendship. Painting from the studio he built there, his sense of composition nevertheless remained him towards a brief career in advertising at Lever Bros. and J. Walter Thompson. Hoping to break framed by London windowpanes, and he later said: “I tend to see things framed in a rectangle, into the film business, he then left for Hollywood, where he spent a year and a half, followed and once struck by a composition I have to make a drawing of it and take it to the studio. I do like by the obligatory pre-war travels in Europe. Eventually, he became private secretary to Viscount a ‘workshop’. [But] I can’t paint in my flat, there are too many memories.” Hambledon, owner of W. H. Smith, but was so skilled at managing both Lord Hambledon’s finances and his properties, that a few years later Knollys took up a second career. He became an art Knollys spent his later life in Hampshire painting, cooking and giving dinner parties – that were as dealer. likely to include one of the Sitwells as his cleaning lady – in rooms hung with paintings by Grant, Hitchens, Sutherland, Alfred Wallis, Winifred Nicholson, Lucien Pissarro and Sir Matthew Smith, Around 1936, he became partners in the Storran Gallery, a small space near Harrod’s established whose works strongly influenced Knollys’ decorative Fauvism. When Knollys died in 1991, Radev sold by Ala Story, an Austrian dealer who showed works by Pavel Tchelitchew, Ivon Hitchens, Frances the house and moved his collection to London, where he effectively preserved it intact until his own Hodgkins, Christopher Wood and Victor Pasmore. Story’s assistant was Frank Coombs, a young death in 2008. That year, the collection was exhibited for the first time in a dedicated exhibition at member of the London Group, who later became the great love of Knollys’ life. When Ala Story Pallant House in Chichester. moved to California, Knollys bought her half of the business. Knollys and Coombs organised themed and monograph shows of works by Monet, Renoir, Gauguin, Picasso, Vlaminck, Derain, Earlier Duncan Grant had written: “It has been about twenty years since I first saw a canvas by Picasso and Modigliani, dealing on a sale-or-return basis, unimpeded by either overhead costs or Eardley Knollys. What I felt then was the integrity of his courageous enthusiasm – courageous their modest premises. Lady Ottoline Morell was a regular client, and in addition to Duncan Grant because it seemed to me relatively late in life, like Gauguin, he was burning all the boats in his and Graham Sutherland, they befriended many of the artists they showed. In 1937, they moved dedication to painting.” to Albany Court Yard off Piccadilly, a small, but brilliantly configured space, thanks to Coombs’s Knollys said of his own work: “I have always loved bright strong colours – muddy ones seem to me sophisticated mix of artificial and natural lighting. The gallery continued after the outbreak of symbols of gloom. This led me to the Pont Aven and Fauve painters, and they remain my favourites. WWII, despite Coombs joining the Royal Navy. (Knollys worked on a farm in Dorchester.) However, But I soon discovered – as they did – that youth and exceptional genius are needed to apply in the spring of 1941, Coombs was killed in a Belfast air raid. Knollys was devastated and while he blazing colours so recklessly... I try to drive along the splendid roads they opened – in my own car continued to buy and sell pictures, eventually he closed the gallery. of course and with some personal diversions.” He began to work as an assistant to Donald MacLeod, secretary of the National Trust. James Lees- The mixture of salon culture, country-house parties, old school and Charvet ties that colour Knollys’ Milne soon joined them and became one of Knollys’ closest friends, despite their different tastes and life might have been lifted straight out of P. G. Wodehouse (although it’s doubtful he would have politics. The two men shared a common passion in the growing plight of English heritage. (Lees- found this comparison flattering). Nevertheless, the enduring point of Knollys’ life was pleasure: the Milne had previously helped to set up the Country Houses Committee.) As more and more owners joy he took in painting, and the joy he took in sharing it with such a supportive, stimulating circle of country houses faced losing their properties in the wake of dwindling funds, servants and heirs, of friends. they looked to the National Trust for support. Knollys became responsible for advising properties Andrea Gates in Wales and Wessex, including Avebury Manor, whose Neolithic stone circle he championed to Director the Trust and which is now considered second only to Stonehenge in archaeological importance. Landscape 1. The Younger Trees oil on canvas 3 7 63 x 76 cms 24 ⁄4 x 29 ⁄8 ins 2. Reflections at Mottisfont oil on canvas 7 1 91 x 64 cms 35 ⁄8 x 25 ⁄4 ins 3. Clumps of Trees oil on canvas 1 7 51 x 76 cms 20 ⁄8 x 29 ⁄8 ins 4. Cityscape oil on canvas 7 76 x 61 cms 29 ⁄8 x 24 ins 5. Reflections oil on canvas 71 x 91 cms 28 x 36 ins 6. Blue Poplars oil on canvas 7 71 x 91 cms 28 x 35 ⁄8 ins 7. In the Drome oil on canvas 1 66 x 46 cms 26 x 18 ⁄8 ins 8. The Chalk Heap oil on canvas 1 61 x 46 cms 24 x 18 ⁄8 ins 9. Olive Grove oil on canvas 51 x 41 cms 20 x 16 ins 10. Summer, Renishaw oil on canvas 1 76 x 41 cms 30 x 16 ⁄8 ins 11. Pink Blossom oil on canvas 91 x 122 cms 36 x 48 ins 12. Thames Warehouse oil on canvas 51 x 66 cms 20 x 26 ins 13. Hampshire View oil on canvas 1 51 x 61 cms 20 ⁄8 x 24 ins 14. View from Window, Le Touquet gouache on paper 1 7 55 x 43 cms 21 ⁄2 x 16 ⁄8 ins 15. Earthworks oil on canvas 51 x 76 cms 20 x 30 ins 16. May Tree oil on canvas 76 x 64 cms 30 x 25 ins 17. Landscape in the Var, Provence oil on canvas 1 64 x 77 cms 25 x 30 ⁄4 ins 18. View from the Studio, The Slade oil on canvas 1 60 x 117 cms 23 ⁄2 x 46 ins 19. The Valley oil on canvas 51 x 66 cms 20 x 26 ins 20. Crofton Hall Lake oil on canvas 53 x 69 cms 21 x 27 ins 21. Spring Blossom oil on canvas 51 x 66 cms 20 x 26 ins 22. Hampshire Fields oil on paper 1 1 45 x 65 cms 17 ⁄2 x 25 ⁄2 ins 23. River Valley, Hampshire lithograph 46 x 56 cms 18 x 22 ins 24. Hampshire Landscape lithograph 76 x 56 cms 30 x 22 ins Still life 25. Still Life with Chrysanthemum 26. Dahlias pastel oil on canvas 1 28 x 53 cms 11 x 21 ins 61 x 51 cms 24 x 20 ⁄8 ins 27. Omega Roses 28. Chianti Bottle Still Life oil on canvas oil on canvas 56 x 46 cms 22 x 18 ins 64 x 76 cms 25 x 30 ins 29. The Pink Bowl 30. Poppies in Purple Vase oil on canvas oil on canvas 25 x 36 cms 10 x 14 ins 61 x 51 cms 24 x 20 ins 31. Black Vase Yellow Flowers 32. Still Life with Pears pastel oil on canvas 1 61 x 47 cms 24 x 18 ⁄2 ins 76 x 64 cms 30 x 25 ins 33. Still Life: Lemons Peaches and Cucumber 34. Tulips oil on canvas oil on canvas 1 61 x 64 cms 24 x 25 ins 66 x 51 cms 26 x 20 ⁄8 ins Biography Photo courtesy of the Radev Collection Radev the of courtesy Photo 1902 Born Arlesford, Hampshire on November 21 1920s Oxford University, founder member of Antony Eden’s Uffizi Society.