Edward Eardley Knollys (1902–1991) was a member of theBloomsbury 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]
Born inAlresford,Hampshire to Cyprian Robert Knollys (1868-1940), a land agent descended from a junior branch of the family of theEarl of Banbury and his wife Audrey (née Hill; 1871-1957), he was educated atWinchester College andChrist Church, Oxford.[4][5]
Knollys, along with his life partnerFrank Coombs ranThe Storran Gallery at 106 Brompton Road, oppositeHarrods, from 1936 and 1944.[6] They sold works by artists such asAmedeo Modigliani,Maurice Utrillo andChaïm Soutine. Coombs was killed in aWorld War II air raid in Belfast in 1941, which led to the bereaved Knollys closing the gallery in 1944.[7][8]
In 1945, Knollys,Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville and the music criticDesmond Shawe-Taylor jointly bought a Georgian rectory inLong Crichel, Dorset, where along with the gay activist and eye surgeonPatrick Trevor-Roper, literary criticRaymond Mortimer andJames Lees-Milne, they established "what in effect was a male salon, entertaining at the weekends a galaxy of friends from the worlds of books and music".[8][9][10] Milne recruited Knollys to join him at theNational 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.
In 1965, Knollys inherited a large collection of artworks from Edward Sackville-West, which he added to and on his death in 1991, bequeathed to the Bulgarian emigre and picture framer Mattei Radev, a former lover ofE.M. Forster. The collection, now known asThe Radev Collection, consists of more than 800 works ofImpressionist andModernist art.[7]
Several photos from the 1920s of Knollys and friends by LadyOttoline Morrell are in theNational Portrait Gallery, London.[11]
Eardley Knollys Papers. James Marshall and Marie-Louise Osborn Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
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