Ways of Life: Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard Artists

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The lives of Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard artists represent a thrilling tipping point in twentieth-century modernism: a new guard, a new way of making and seeing, and a new way of living with art. An excellent biography of Jim Ede. Reading Laura Freeman's luminous study of the curator and collector, I can't help but picture the gallery and house he built - the haven of Kettle's Yard in Cambridge Daily Telegraph An extraordinary tale and could not have been told better or with more sensitivity. Her book will make anyone want to pay an immediate visit Literary Review Anyone familiar with it will recognise the jarring significance of Freeman’s “pebble” description – there are no imperfect pebbles at Kettle’s Yard. Those selected specimens that feature among the found and natural objects on display are arranged in a spiral, or nested in a basket. For Ede, works of art were friends and art could be found wherever you looked - in a pebble, feather or seedhead. Art livedand a life without art, beauty, friendship and creativity was a life not worth living.

He met all of these people through working at the Tate as a curator, often not directly as a result of his day job but because he went to so many shows and openings every evening. Laura says: “Jim had this slightly rueful phrase. He talks about his dukey days, as in wanting to court dukes and duchesses and get invited to society balls.That’s when he was quite a young man in his 20s, but he sort of repents of that and he realises he doesn’t want to be on the edges of the aristocracy because, actually, the best parties were being held by the Bloomsbury set or the dancers around Diaghilev’s ballet Russe, or Lady Ottoline Morell, who was a great society hostess. He goes to Amsterdam. He meets the widow of the widow of Van Gogh’s brother, and she says we’ll go upstairs to the attic and have a rummage,” explains Laura. It is an extraordinary tale and could not have been told better or with more sensitivity. Her book will make anyone want to pay an immediate visit” ― Literary Review In this first biography of the creator of Kettle's Yard, Laura Freeman reveals the life of a visionary who helped shape twentieth-century British art .

It is an extraordinary tale and could not have been told better or with more sensitivity. Her book will make anyone want to pay an immediate visit * Literary Review * Jim Ede is the figure who unites them. His vision continues to influence the way we understand art and modern living. He was a man of extraordinary energies: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists. For Ede, works of art were friends and art could be found wherever you looked - in a pebble, feather or seedhead. Art lived and a life without art, beauty, friendship and creativity was a life not worth living. Art was not for galleries alone and it certainly wasn't only for the rich. At Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, he opened his home and his collection to all comers. He showed generations of visitors that learning to look could be a whole new way of life. The lives of Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard artists represent a thrilling tipping point in twentieth-century modernism: a new guard, a new way of making and seeing, and a new way of living with art. The artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Alfred Wallis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were not a set like the Bloomsbury Set or Ravilious and his friends. But Jim Ede recognised in each of the artists he championed something common and kindred, some quality of light and life and line.

And you slightly feel like an outsider, that you’re not really allowed to somehow be in the art gang because you’re not cool enough or clever enough. And Jim’s great driving idea was that art was for everyone, beautiful rooms were a human right. Living in pleasant spaces surrounded by lovely things was spiritually and morally on a day-to-day basis uplifting. I think that’s the really important message that I hope people take away from from his life and from Kettle’s Yard.” Meticulously researched, sympathetically told, the book is infused with the spirit of Kettle's Yard * i * Laura Freeman has more than done her subject justice. It is a complicated story, lucidly told and neatly illustrated * Spectator * Her meticulously researched, sympathetically told account confirms what visitors to Kettle’s Yard know instinctively – living with Jim Ede must have been very trying indeed.

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The artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Alfred Wallis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were not a set like the Bloomsbury Set or Ravilious and his friends. But Jim Ede recognised in each of the artists he championed something common and kindred, some quality of light and life and line. On the other hand, when they first moved in, Helen had been recovering from a mastectomy following breast cancer and the first thing Jim did was to set up coconut bird feeders in the trees outside her bedroom window. I think sometimes we over-prioritise romantic love and diminish the importance of the love that comes from companionship. I think they absolutely have that. It’s funny actually. When I was writing the book I remembered when Prince Philip died and they kept playing that quote from the Queen saying, ‘he was my strength and stay’. And I think for Jim I think Helen was his strength and stay. I think he was sometimes prone to flights of fancy. And she was incredibly steady. And was a kind of anchor for him.”

Meticulously researched, sympathetically told, the book is infused with the spirit of Kettle's Yard i Among the paintings was Van Gogh’s most famous work, Sunflowers. “They did buy some of them but Britain would have a much much better collection of Van Goghs had they listened to Jim.” A place of beauty’: Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, showing a Buddha from Thailand (13th or 14th century) and works by Mario Sironi, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and Ben Nicholson. Photograph: Paul Allitt Jim Ede is the figure who unites them. His vision continues to influence the way we understand art and modern living. He was a man of extraordinary energies: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists. He was a man of extraordinary energies: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists.The Great War haunts its pastoral calm. Jones, like Ede, survived the western front, and became one of its poets, transfiguring his memories of the Battle of the Somme in his epic In Parenthesis. Ede befriended Jones and often had him as a guest at his home: there’s really nowhere else that you can appreciate this poet’s art as you can here. Vexilla Regis, a depiction of a deep dark wood, refers to the ancient Romans and Arthur, but you can hear the distant artillery fire through the trees. It’s the Welsh answer to the German history painter Anselm Kiefer. LF: People have told me they cried when Helen died, and then you get these awful deaths one after the other – David Jones and Barbara Hepworth , Winifred Nicholson, Ben Nicholson, and then Jim himself. I cried writing those chapters. It’s not just that you’re saying goodbye to a book that has taken up a huge amount of your life, you’re saying goodbye to these people who almost become your friends. My dad once said, “You know, I think you’re companion-ed by these people.” And I absolutely was. But when funds did not stretch this far, they eventually settled on four almost derelict cottages that were to become Kettle’s Yard. Jim Ede in Kettle's Yard: Courtesy of Kettle's Yard