EARDLEY KNOLLYS (BRITISH 1902-1991)
MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE
signed with initials lower left; numbered 45 on the reverse
oil on canvas
30.5 x 40.5cm; 12 x 16in
45 x 54.5cm; 17 3/4 x 21 1/2in (framed)

EARDLEY KNOLLYS (LOTS 33-39)

Introduction
SUCH COURAGEOUS ENTHUSIASM… he is one of the purest painters I know.
Duncan Grant

Artist, gallerist, dealer, advertising executive and aspiring Hollywood director are just a handful of the activities Eardley Knollys pursued during his life. A descendant of the Earls of Banbury, after Christ Church College, Oxford, he worked for Lever Brothers and J Walter Thompson before travelling to America to work on silent films in California. On his return to London he was appointed private secretary to Lord Hambleden, and in 1936 joined the Storran Gallery opposite Harrods on the Brompton Road where his partner, the artist Frank Coombs, was assistant to the owner Ala Story.

After buying out Story, Knollys and Coombs consolidated the Storran Gallery into a hub of avant-garde art, building up a culturally influential network in both London and Paris. Their deceptively prosaic opening exhibition Flower Paintings featured works by Gauguin, Vlaminck, Modigliani and Monet. The show explored the innovative ways such everyday subject matter had been reinterpreted in modern art (something which would come to influence Knollys’ own work – see lot 38). They welcomed a raft of esteemed collectors to their premises, including Lady Ottoline Morrell, Duncan Grant and others of the Bloomsbury set as well as the influential George Eumorfopoulos. But the tragic death of Coombs in an air raid in 1941 whilst serving in the Royal Navy in Belfast signalled the end of The Storran Gallery’s activities. Knollys lost his enthusiasm for the venture and closed it for good shortly after the end of the War.

Thereafter he took a job with the nascent National Trust and moved to live near Wimborne in Dorset. At the Trust he worked as assistant to the secretary, Donald Macleod Matheson. He joined James Lee-Milne on his visits to estates and country houses across Wessex and Wales and served as the South-West representative for the National Trust for some fifteen years. At Crichel House near Wimborne he set up a communal menage with the music critics Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor, later joined by the literary critic of the New Statesman Raymond Mortimer. Crichel became a house for creatives and intellectuals. Lees-Milne came to regard it as a second home, and visitors ranged from the interior designer Sybil Colefax to film director Anthony Asquith; writers included Nancy Mitford and Laurie Lee; among visiting artists were Graham Sutherland and Ben Nicholson; musicians included the composer Benjamin Britten and soprano Elisabeth Schumann.

It was thus only in his fifties that Knollys began his career as a painter when he was encouraged by the artist Edward Le Bas during a holiday in Brittany. As a dealer, Knollys had encountered a wide range of contemporary art and developed a particular love for vibrant colour and pattern through his encounters with Post-Impressionism and Fauvism, stating that ‘I have always loved bright strong colours – muddy ones seem to me symbols of gloom’.

Often sketching en plein air to be later translated to canvas in his studio, or from memories of his travels in Spain, France and Italy, Knollys deployed colour to build space and form (lots 34 & 35). He had his first solo exhibition in 1960 at the Minories, Colchester and a plethora of subsequent shows including with Michael Parkin in London and Achim Moeller in New York and at Southampton City Art Gallery. Remembered by his peers for his charm and sense of humour, Frances Partridge recalled that ‘everyone loved Eardley, you couldn’t help it’. Knolly’s joie de vivre left a mark on his contemporaries which continues to radiate from his playful and typically colourful works today.