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Edward Frank Willis James (16 August 1907 – 2 December 1984) was a British poet known for his patronage of the surrealism art movement.
Edward James had four older sisters: Audrey, Millicent, Xandra, and Silvia. He was educated at Lockers Park School, then briefly at Eton college, then at Le Rosey in Switzerland, and finally at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a contemporary of Evelyn Waugh (Waugh attended Hertford College) and Harold Acton, a fellow student at Christ Church. When his father died in 1912 he inherited the West Dean House estate in Sussex, held in trust until he came of age. He was also left a large sum in trust when his uncle John Arthur James died in 1917.
James's first sponsorship of note was in publishing John Betjeman's first book of poems when at Oxford. He worked with Brian Howard on the Glass Omnibus. After Oxford, James had a brief career as a trainee diplomat at the embassy in Rome. He was asked to send a coded message to London that the Italians had laid the keels for three destroyers, but got the code wrong; the message said "300 destroyers". Shortly after this he was sent "on indefinite leave".
In the early 1930s, James married Tilly Losch, an Austrian dancer, choreographer, actress and painter. He had several productions created expressly for her, the most notable of which was Les Ballets 1933, which included Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya and George Balanchine. He and Boris Kochno commissioned that year Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill last collaboration, The Seven Deadly Sins, which Balanchine produced, directed and choreographed.
James divorced Losch in 1934, accusing her of adultery with Prince Serge Obolensky, an American hotel executive; her countersuit, in which she made it clear that James was homosexual, failed. James was in fact bisexual. After the divorce, James joined a social set in England which included the Mitford sisters and the composer Lord Berners.
He sponsored Salvador Dalí for the whole of 1938 and his collection of paintings and art objects subsequently came to be accepted as one of the finest collections of surrealist work in private hands. He also provided practical help, supporting Dalí for about two years. They collaborated on the Mae West Sofas and Lobster Telephones, which James had installed in his private home near West Dean House.
James appeared in two surrealist paintings, both by Magritte:
Salvador Dali put James in touch with the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte (1889–1967).Hammacher, A. M. (1973) Magritte. The Library of Great Painters. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 167 pp. James later hosted Magritte for three weeks at his home on 35 Wimpole Street, London in February and March 1937, where Magritte painted a number of gouaches and oils, some of which were new, others were copies of his earlier work.Torczyner, Harry (1977) Magritte: Ideas and Images. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 277 pp. page The terms agreed on were that Magritte was to be paid £250 to paint copies or variations of three paintings selected by James from photographs: On the Threshold of Liberty (1929), The Red Model (1935), and The Youth Illustrated (1936) and pay his own travel expenses, while James was to provide a studio space above his garage as well as art supplies and canvases. James intended to install the paintings behind backless mirrors, so as to only be observable in bright light.Roegiers, Patrick (2005) Magritte and Photography. Ludion and D.A. P./Distributed Art Publishers. New York, 167 pp. note The new version of The Red Model, painted at James’s request, was a large canvas (72 × 52.5 in.) of higher quality than the original and given a British touch with the addition of a few English coins scattered in the dirt. It is now in the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam along with the 1937 version of The Youth Illustrated (79 × 60 in.). Magritte went on to paint at least seven versions of The Red Model. Magritte also enlarged and reformatted the 1937 version of On the Threshold of Liberty (94 × 73 in.), now in the Art Institute of Chicago, from horizontal to vertical to fit the intended installation site for James.Art Institute of Chicago, Collection, On the Threshold of Liberty In a letter to Louis Scutenaire and Irène Hamoir (February 18, 1937), Magritte wrote "London is a revelation. Of course, I'm only just beginning to discover it. But until now, everything is perfect (of course I don't speak English, but "there's something"). Yesterday evening we went to visit Henry Moore, a charming sculptor, sort of Jean Arp-Picasso..."
In June that year, Magritte painted some portraits of James including Not to be Reproduced and The Pleasure Principle. The Pleasure Principle In the first, James looks into a mirror which shows the back of his head; in the second, James's head is an enigmatic radiating light. Magritte painted Pleasure Principle from photographs of James taken by Man Ray, following Magritte's precise staging instructions. The Pleasure Principle was based on a small ink sketch from the year before, titled Failed Portrait of. In Not to be Reproduced, the book sitting on the mantel is the French edition of Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. James’s art collection included works by Hieronymus Bosch, Giorgio de Chirico, Paul Klee, Leonora Carrington, Pavel Tchelitchew, Pablo Picasso, Giacometti, Max Ernst and Paul Delvaux. Most were sold at a well-publicized sale at Christie's two years after his death.
His intellectual interest in surrealism is demonstrated by his sponsorship of Minotaure, a lavish Surrealist magazine published in Paris. His refurbishment of Monkton House, a part of the West Dean Estate, was a Surrealist dream. It was done in collaboration with the pioneering British decorator Syrie Maugham, and has some of the most iconic Surrealist works on display, including the large Mae West Lips Sofa to which Dalí gave the form and colour of the Mae West lips, and his Lobster Telephone in white. (The Surrealist tradition at Monkton House was maintained when the interior designer Derek Frost did extensive work to the house and designed more custom pieces of furniture in the late 1980s.) James donated these two items (among others) to the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery.Rose Collis The New Encyclopaedia of Brighton, Brighton: Brighton & Hove Libraries, 2010, p. 207 James's most fantastic Surrealist creation was a sculpture garden in the Mexican rainforest, "Las Pozas".
West Dean College was set up in 1971 in response to James's vision of establishing "an educational foundation where creative talents can be discovered and developed, and where one can spread culture through the teaching of crafts and the preservation of knowledge that might otherwise be destroyed or forgotten".
Edward James is buried in the St Roche's Arboretum at West Dean, with the simple inscription Edward James 1907 – 1984 Poet. The stone was carved by John Skelton.
I have seen such beauty as one man has seldom seen; surrounded by the forests, the great green gloom
- therefore will I be grateful to die in this little room,
Here amid the warmth of the rain, what might have been
- of trees my only gloom – and the sound, the sound of green.
who says: 'You did your best, rest' – and after you the bloom
- is resolved into the tenderness of a tall doom
And the ghosts of the birds I loved, will attend me each a friend;
- of what you loved and planted still will whisper what you mean.
You, through the trees, shall hear them, long after the end
- like them shall I have flown beyond the realm of words.
continue, as – defended by the cortege of their wings –
- calling me beyond the river. For the cries of birds
- my soul among strange silences yet sings.
—Edward James, Poet 1907 – 1984
A museum dedicated to Edward James opened its doors in Xilitla on 22 December 2022. Museo Edward James contains a collection of wooden moulds used in the construction of Las Pozas, books written by James, photographs and drawings. It also features a rare painting by James, made under the supervision of his friend, Leonora Carrington. The museum is located across the road from the sculpture garden at Las Pozas.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Las Pozas: Steps & Falls available on iTunes store
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