Eardley Knollys

(Edward) Eardley Knollys (1902–1991) was a member of the Bloomsbury Group of artists [1] - variously an art critic, art dealer and collector, active from the 1920s to 1950s. He only himself began to paint in 1949, and had his first solo exhibition at the age of 58 in 1960,[2] by which time he was already a "minor legend in British art".[3]

Eardley Knollys by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, late 1924

Born in Alresford, Hampshire to Cyprian Robert Knollys, a land agent descended from a junior branch of the family of the Earl of Banbury and his wife Audrey (née Hill), he was educated at Winchester and Christ Church, Oxford.[4]

He was a director of The Storran Gallery at 106 Brompton Road, opposite Harrods. Together with him worked Frank Coombs, the great love of his life.[5][6] After Coombs's death in World War II, Knollys, deeply affected, closed the Storran Gallery.[6]

Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville, Patrick Trevor-Roper, the literary critic Raymond Mortimer, the music critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Knollys established "what in effect was a male salon, entertaining at the weekends a galaxy of friends from the worlds of books and music" in Long Crichel, Dorset, including James Lees-Milne, a close friend of Knollys,[7] who recruited him to join him at the National Trust during World War II, and over the next 15 years accompanied him on many of the trips to country houses recorded in his published volumes of diaries.

Several photos from the 1920s of Knollys and friends by Lady Ottoline Morrell are in the National Portrait Gallery, London.[8]

See also

Notes
  1. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6826398.ece
  2. Sotheby's lot record
  3. Guardian
  4. http://www.messums.com/artist/25/Eardley-Knollys/
  5. "The Radev Collection: Bloomsbury and Beyond" (PDF). Retrieved July 26, 2017.
  6. Farnham Herald. "Life and times of artist in public gaze". Retrieved July 26, 2017.
  7. De-la-Noy, Michael. "West, Edward Charles Sackville-, fifth Baron Sackville (1901–1965)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, accessed 9 December 2009; Obituary of Trevor-Roper, The Independent, May 4, 2004
  8. Portraits of Eardley Knollys at the National Portrait Gallery, London

Eardley Knollys Papers. James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

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