Real Surreal

Most people would be forgiven for not recognising the name Edward James as a leading figure of the 20th century art world; but the chances are that you’ve seen a painting of him. Rene Magritte’s famous work, Not To Be Reproduced, showing the rear view of a man looking into a mirror only for the back of his head to be reflected in the glass, features James; and another work, The Pleasure Principle, is also a portrait of James, though it’s hard to tell as the head atop a double-breasted suit is an orb of intense radiating light - Surrealists, eh?

Edward James was born into a wealthy family in 1907 to a merchant father and socialite mother. It was rumoured that he had been fathered by Edward VII, but then, who wasn’t in those days? He inherited his home, the West Dean estate near Chichester in West Sussex, on the death of his father in 1912 but, being only 5-years-old at the time, he couldn’t get his hands on it until 1932. By this time, James had finished his education at Oxford, with contemporaries Evelyn Waugh and John Betjeman, and was gadding about Europe with his wife, Austrian dancer and painter Tilly Losch. Their relationship was fairly brief and they divorced acrimoniously: he accusing her of adultery, she accusing him of being homosexual.

After the marriage, James concentrated on writing, publishing three volumes of poetry in the 1930s, and hanging out with Surrealist artists. He sponsored Salvador Dali for a couple of years and Dali introduced him to Magritte. But his biggest contribution to Surrealism happened back in Sussex. He had amassed a huge art collection, including works by Paul Klee, Leonora Carrington and Max Ernst, as well as Dali and Magritte, and in 1935 he took this to Monkton House, a Lutyens-designed hunting lodge on his West Dean estate. With the help of architects and designers, he set about transforming the house into a surrealist heaven. Behind a purple exterior were rooms with padded and geometrically patterned walls filled with paintings and artefacts. Dali’s most famous contributions to the house’s furnishings were his Mae West Lips Sofa and his Lobster Telephone.

In the 1940s, James visited Mexico and, having fallen in love with the country’s natural beauty, he dedicated the rest of his life to creating Las Pozas, a subtropical garden containing waterfalls, pools and works of art. In 1964, he donated his West Dean estate to a charitable trust to establish a centre for the teaching of traditional arts and crafts. Much of his art collection was sold before and after his death in 1984 and, although West Dean College of Arts and Conservation continues to thrive on the estate where James is buried, Monkton House is in private hands and is closed to visitors. However, if four-storey high Surrealist concrete sculptures are your thing, Las Pozas is open.