James Pitcairn-Knowles

James Pitcairn Knowles ( József Rippl-Rónai , 1899)

James Pitcairn-Knowles (born September 28, 1863 in Rotterdam , † January 2, 1954 in Hungen ) was a painter , graphic artist and sculptor of Scottish descent who spent most of his life in Germany. Because he went to school in Wiesbaden, exhibited his pictures in the spa town and had the Freudenberg Castle built on the edge of it, he is counted among the Wiesbaden painters .

youth

The father of James Pitcairn Knowles, William, came from a family in Aberdeen and the surrounding area in the northeast of Scotland by the wool trade, grain and dry goods had become rich. In Rotterdam, where his father specialized in the wool trade, after the death of his first wife in 1862, he married the opera singer Doris Kluge, a Jew whose parents owned a clothing store in Berlin. Knowles siblings were also born in Rotterdam, his sister Isabella, who died at the age of fifteen in 1865, and his brother Andrew . In Rotterdam the family was registered with the British Embassy. The business in Rotterdam was so successful for father William that in 1873, at the age of fifty-two, he retired in the spa town of Wiesbaden and was able to concentrate on his passion, his art collection, primarily Old Masters .

According to his father's will, Knowles, who had gone to the private Küngler Institute in Wiesbaden-Biebrich, was supposed to gain experience in the textile industry in Manchester at the age of eighteen in order to subsequently support his older step-brother , William junior, in the family business in Rotterdam. This attempt to introduce Knowles into the wool trade failed. Knowles returned to Wiesbaden in 1882 and was able to persuade his father to finance him to study art.

Studied art in Weimar and Munich

From 1883 Knowles studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich a . a. with Carl Theodor von Piloty and Fritz von Uhde . He then went to the art school in Weimar to enroll with Leopold von Kalckreuth . All three teachers are likely to have helped shape the realistic painting style of Knowles, which he normally practiced until the 1950s.

In Paris

In 1887 Knowles went to Paris to study at the Académie Julian in Jean-Paul Laurens' studio . After completing his training in Munich and Weimar, Knowles saw Laurens as the “right teacher [...], whose manner kept the middle between the costume painting of the older school and the romanticism that has blossomed again today with a move into medieval mysticism. “Works by Besnard , Burne-Jones , Crane and Dante Gabriel Rossetti are said to have fascinated him at first. However, the above mentioned artists have left no noticeable traces in his previously known work.

In Paris he frequented a. a. also in the house of the Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy , where he was received on a friendly basis because his father had bought paintings from him through the Viennese art dealer Charles Sedelmeyer . At a reception there he met József Rippl-Rónai , who later became the most famous Hungarian painter of Classical Modernism. He was to have a deep, lifelong friendship with him, as evidenced by five portraits that Rónai painted of his friend.

Around 1888 Knowles and Ronai came into contact with the Nabis , into whose community both were accepted. So the Scot and the Hungarian, along with Morgens Ballin , Félix Vallotton and Jan Verkade, were among the few non-French in the group. Few of Knowles' works, such as B. the woodcut “Le Bain” document a clear, but temporary influence of the Nabis foreign exchange on his art. The art historian Mela Escherich , who from the 1920s worked as a writer a. a. also committed to Jawlensky , explained in 1912 to Knowle's behavior towards innovations in art: “The actual school conditions are not recognizable. The rich intellectual relationships that the young artist developed in Paris, in particular, seem to be more important. B. associated with Aristide Maillol , whom he also introduced to his friend Ronai in 1890.

In Paris, Knowles Marie-Eugénie-Guérinet Victoria (1870-1959), a daughter of Napoleon III. and a lady-in-waiting , whose godmother was Napoleon III's wife, Empress Eugénie . Knowles, Ronai and his girlfriend at the time and later wife, Lazarine Baudrion, only knew Marie-Eugénie under the name Yvonne. Yvonne had left her much older husband, a duke. Disappointed with the marriage, she intended to become a nun. At the same time, Knowles, who was prone to manic depressions , decided to become a monk. When they met, both gave up on their plan. Yvonne came to Wiesbaden with Knowles.

Back in Wiesbaden

Portrait of James Pitcairn Knowles (József Rippl-Rónai, 1892)

Southwest view of Freudenberg Castle, Wiesbaden-Dotzheim

“In 1891 he returned home to Wiesbaden with great plans. Typhus threw him on the sickbed and drained his strength for years. ”Knowles was only able to paint again three years later. In January 1895 he exhibited together with August von Heyden and Hubert von Heyden in the Fritz Gurlitt Salon . When Rippl-Ronai had received the order from the Hungarian Count Tivandar Andrássy to furnish the dining room for his Tiszadob Castle , he designed colored windows and a glass ceiling in 1897/98 "with the help of my friend Knowles in Wiesbaden", which under the supervision of both artists in Wiesbaden.

On the way back, Rónai took a series of pictures by Knowles with him as gifts to his hometown of Kaposvár in Hungary , where his former home was converted into the Rippl-Ronai Museum . A number of Knowles' works are located there today. "During this time, Knowles Plan came up with ideas of an earthly paradise, which later led to a palace building [in Wiesbaden]." From 1902 he conducted negotiations for the purchase of a site on a hill near Wiesbaden-Dotzheim with a view of the Rhine. First a solid log house was built there by Swedish carpenters , which was finished in 1903. Knowles and Yvonne / Marie-Eugénie-Guérinet Victoria commissioned the architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg to realize the palace . It was ready for occupancy in autumn 1905 and was named Schloss Freudenberg . There the couple held lavish parties and balls, which the local newspapers reported on several times. So it was z. B. 1906 in an article: "With fairy lighting [...] a frugal supper took place in the evening , with toasts to the gracious hosts, Mr. J. Pitcairn-Knowles and his esteemed wife." When Knowles and Marie-Eugenie -Guérinet Victoria separated in 1909, the castle was sold. "All in all, around 660,000 M may have been used for the site, buildings and park (without water supply)."

The Wiesbaden Gallery Aktuaryus taught Knowles in 1912 an exhibition of that in the magazine Der Cicerone an enthusiastic found meeting: "The artist has settled for some time in Wiesbaden, where he opened quickly, the first circle. Pitcair-Knowles is a woman painter. His art breathes high culture, sensitive taste, spiritualistic empathy for the secret realm of the feminine. A technique of the most subtle kind. Fine, gray tones pale to the milky, in the incarnate sometimes increasing slightly to the material tone of yellowish or brownish marble or striving towards a quasi-breathing pink, subdued to the last degree of perceptibility. "

As an Englishman, Knowles had apparently been interned for some time during the First World War .

Portrait orders

In 1919 Knowles married the thirty-three-year-old Princess Louise zu Solms-Braunfels (1885–1964). The couple spent the following years in the Solms villa in Bad Homburg . This was followed by stays in the Solms castles in Lich and Braunfels . Knowles spent the last few decades with his wife in Hungen Castle in the Gießen district . Not only relatives from the Hessian aristocracy invited Knowles to their castles and let him portray them. From a letter to his friend Rippl-Ronai in Kaposvár one learns that Knowles was still a valued portraitist in Wiesbaden. So let z. For example, the ophthalmologist Hermann Pagenstecher (1844–1932) paints his wife von Knowles to present the portrait to his visitors. In another letter to Ronai, he reports that he earned 6-10,000 Reichsmarks on a portrait in the late 1920s .

In the 1930s

In the 1930s, according to the art historian Schenck zu Schweinsberg , Knowles limited himself “with excellent observation, a concise, controlled, sharply modulating painting style to a representation of the heads that was often overlapped by the frame. The scarce areas of the background dispense with any hint of pictorial space. [...] to have a certain highly educated painter a fixed position within the German painting, does not seem at the moment possible. "Thus Knowles could be any of the artistic isms assign, as the expressionism or even the subsequent realism and thus escaping in the era of National Socialism with Ban on painting to be harassed.

Under house arrest

When England declared war on Nazi Germany on September 3, 1939 , Knowles applied for German citizenship in the district town of Giessen because he believed that as an Englishman it would be better to be considered German. He was told that this would not be possible as long as the war lasted. Imprisonment is no longer an option for him because he is over sixty years old. From then on, he had to consider himself under house arrest . As a seventy-six year old, he only had to report to the police in Hungen once a week. Knowles was obviously unaware of the danger he had put himself in applying for his naturalization . If the authorities had been positive about his request, he might have had to provide evidence of Aryan origin that would have led to the discovery that he was half-Jewish . In this respect he remained an Englishman until the end of his life.

The opportunities to stay in the Hungen Castle were limited to a few rooms for Knowles and his wife, while the Nazi henchman Alfred Rosenberg, authorized by the Fuehrer's decree , had the majority of the castle set up as a depot for looted art . There, "fifty secretaries" cataloged looted Jewish art under the supervision of experts and others. a. Thousands of Jewish books and manuscripts. Inestimable values ​​were hoarded in the castle, e.g. B. the complete library, paintings and cult objects from the Frankfurt Rothschild Museum . Countless Jewish art treasures from the areas occupied by the Germans during the war were also located in Hungen.

With a white flag and Union Jack to freedom

When the 3rd US Armored Division appeared in the nearby forest of Hungen in early January 1945 , eighty-two-year-old Knowles ran across the fields to meet the US armed forces with a white peace flag in one hand and the Union Jack waving over his head in the other . No shot was fired after Knowles informed the GIs that the German military and Nazi employees who managed the confiscated Jewish objects had escaped from Hungen. The city owes it to a Scottish painter that Hungen and his castle were able to avoid a “bombardment” at the end of the Second World War.

After the Second World War

After the end of the war, Pitcairn-Knowles and his wife continued to live in Hungen Castle, which, like other castles, soon filled with refugees . He wrote to his sister-in-law about his situation in England on January 29, 1949, to live in this house: “is getting more and more terrible - the filth and filth that these poor people brought with them - is getting worse, the more come - Oh, what a world full of misery. ”When Knowles died in 1954, seventy refugees were still living in the castle.

In a letter to his girlfriend, Countess Johanna Solms-Laubach , Knowles wrote of a visit by the art collector Franz Moufang on November 19, 1949. Moufang was then a. a. Cultural advisor for the city of Heidelberg and advisory board member of the Heidelberger Kunstverein .

On the evening before his death on January 2, 1954, ninety-year-old Knowles had been drawing on a picture. A few days later there were various obituaries on the radio and in the press. The Giessener Freie Presse used an excerpt from an article that the writer - formerly studied painter Editha Klipstein had already written for her friend before her death in Laubach in 1953. She saw Knowle's painting “in hopeless competition with the photographer” and justified her actions: “I like to turn to the exceptional phenomena. So today I would like to turn my gaze to Pitcairn-Knowles. [...] The form in which the art disciple assimilates to an established person never existed for a loner like Pitcairn-Knowles. [...] You can see his portraits hanging in castles, in no way resembling the style of the great traveling portraitists, but in the property of the addition of the architectural 'rhythm' they are quite suitable to join them organically in the large row even for distant grandchildren. "

literature

• Maximilian Rapsilber, James Pitcairn-Knowles: A character image from modern artist life . Berlin 1895.
• Mela Escherich: The painter of elegant women, James Pitcairn-Knowles. In: The world spa town. Issue 16/17, 2nd year, 1912, p. 225 ff.
• Pitcairn-Knowles, James . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 27 : Piermaria – Ramsdell . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1933, p. 114 .
• Max Watzke: Freudenberg Castle near Wiesbaden, origin and eventful history. In: Writings of the Heimat- und Verschönerungs-Verein Dotzheim eV No. 3, 1980.
• Jeremy Howard: Counterparts: A study on the Art and Relations of James Pitcairn-Knowles and József Rippl-Rónai. In: exhib. Cat .: In Neuilly, James Pitcairn-Knowles and József Rippl-Rónai. Ernst Múzeum, Budapest 2004, pp. 73 ff.
• Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 14 ff.
2. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 29 f.
3. ↑ Countess Johanna zu Solms-Laubach, whose portrait JPK painted in 1953, he asked z. B. to specify the exact dimensions of your face profile, the distance between eyebrows, nostrils, chin, and the like. a. m. in order to be able to present the current appearance of your portrait as realistically as possible.
   Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 196 f.
4. ↑ Maximilian Rapsilber, James Pitcairn-Knowles: A character image from modern artist life . Berlin 1895, p. 25.
5. ↑ Maximilian Rapsilber, James Pitcairn-Knowles: A character image from modern artist life . Berlin 1895, p. 26.
6. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 35 f.
7. ^ Max Watzke, Schloß Freudenberg, James Pitcairn-Knowles, MS, October 2, 1999, p. 1.
8. ↑ Exhib. Cat .: József Rippl-Rónai, 1861-1927, a Hungarian in Paris. Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 1999.
9. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 47.
10. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 61.
11. ↑ Mela Escherich: The painter of elegant women, James Pitcairn-Knowles. In: The world spa town. Issue 16/17, 2nd year, 1912, p. 231.
12. ↑ In his memoirs, Rónai emphasizes that he owes his friendship with Maillol, Knowles, see: Bernadette Lenke Tusch (translation from Hungarian), József Rippl-Rónai: Memories, (excerpts), in exh. Cat .: József Rippl-Rónai, 1861-1927, a Hungarian in Paris. Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 1999, p. 76.
13. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 65 ff.
14. ↑ Maximilian Rapsilber, James Pitcairn-Knowles: A character image from modern artist life . Berlin 1895, p. 28.
15. ↑ Katalin Kesrerü, József Rippl-Rónai, Berlin 1983, p. 8.
16. ↑ Ágnes Prékopa, József Rippl-Rónais works on applied arts, in exh. Cat .: József Rippl-Rónai, 1861-1927, a Hungarian in Paris. Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 1999, p. 69, figs. 9–10, 12–13.
17. ↑ Max Watzke, Schloß Freudenberg, James Pitcairn-Knowles, MS, October 2, 1999, p. 3.
18. ↑ Max Watzke, Schloß Freudenberg, James Pitcairn-Knowles, MS, October 2, 1999, p. 3, Dotzheimer Zeitung, February 27, 1906.
19. ^ Dotzheimer Zeitung, February 27, 1906.
20. ↑ Max Watzke, Schloss Freudenberg near Wiesbaden, origin and eventful history, writings of the Heimat- und Verschönerungsverein Dotzheim eV, No. 3, 1980, p. 40.
21. ↑ ch., Wiesbaden, Der Kunstsalon Aktuaryus, Der Cicerone, Vol. IV, 1912, p. 401.
22. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 132.
23. ↑ From 1929 on, Eberhard Freiherr Schenk zu Schweinsberg was the first director of the Wiesbaden Museum and was replaced by Hermann Voss in 1934 by the National Socialists .
24. ↑ Eberhard Schenk zu Schweinsberg, in: Max Watzke, Freudenberg Castle near Wiesbaden, origin and eventful history, writings of the Heimat- und Verschönerungsverein Dotzheim eV, No. 3, 1980, p. 32 f.
25. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 156 ff.
26. ^ Daily Express Reporter, Dr. R. ran school for Jew-Haters, Daily Express, April 10, 1945, in: Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 5 f.
27. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 165 f.
28. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 181.
29. ↑ Jeremy Howard: The unfinished monk. In: The life & work of reclusive artist James Pitcairn-Knowles 1863-1954. St Leonards-on-Sea 2013, p. 231 ff.
30. ↑ Editha Klipstein, Klassischer Freimut, dedicated to James Pitcairn-Knowles, Giessener Freie Presse, vol. 204, January 4, 1954.