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Abani Roy and the Edes

In this blog post, Senior Curator (House & Collection) Inga Fraser tells us about the Indian-born artist Abani Roy and his relationship with Jim and Helen Ede over the course of his career.

Abani Roy was born in 1904 in Bengal, India, and trained as an artist in Kolkata. He came to know the Edes while they were living at 1 Elm Row in London in the twenties. Encountering the spareness with which Jim Ede had furnished the Hampstead house prompted Roy to apologise to the Edes, believing he had arrived before they had properly moved in! Roy was a frequent visitor to Elm Row, and Jim and Helen supported him while he found it difficult to earn an income from his art. At times he lived with them, and the Edes’ young daughters Mary and Elisabeth remember trips to the Heath with the artist.

Mary, Jim and Elisabeth Ede with Abani Roy, Hampstead Heath
Abani Roy, Indian Round Table Conference, National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by Jim Ede 1977

In 1931 Roy was commissioned by Sir Akbar Hydari to create a picture of the historic Round Table Conference on India in London at St. James’s Palace, attended – in the second session – by Mahatma Gandhi. The primary work that resulted appears to have been a large copperplate engraving, which was later exhibited at the India Office in London, in July 1938. According to The Times, the main picture was surrounded by portraits of English royalty and ‘scenes from Indian history’, as well as ‘symbols of British and Indian cooperation’, and lettering from different Indian scripts. [1]

Related prints are now in the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland, having been presented to the museum by Jim Ede in 1977 who was by that time living in Edinburgh. The first captures the scene of the conference with the delegates seated around a large table at St. James’s Palace. The second captures a group in more detail, including figures identifiable as delegates Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) and Madan Mohan Malaviya (1861-1946).

Ede sought to champion Roy in English society, introducing his work to T.E. Lawrence, for example. Lawrence wrote to Philip Kerr, Lord Lothian (1882-1940) who had attended the 1931 conferences to note, ‘Abani Roy has done a decent wood engraving, about 8 inches by 6, of the Round Table Conference. All of you are in it.’ Lawrence describes Roy as ‘broke’ and suggests that Lothian and the other delegates each buy a print for 2 guineas a piece.’[2]

Abani Roy’s work was included at the Royal Academy summer exhibitions of 1931 (Snow-covered Land, no. 220), 1932 (Yelverton, Devon, no. 176), 1933 (‘The Shiplake’, Devon, no. 163) and 1936 (Sheepstor, Devonshire, no. 625). [3] Here, his talent was noted by a critic writing for the Journal of the Royal Society of Arts in 1936, who described one of Roy’s paintings as a ‘small nature picture painted with the spontaneity that must always be valuable and agreeable when ably expressed, as it is here’.[4]

Abani Roy, Figures at a table, National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by Jim Ede 1977

Curator and researcher Lizzie Fisher notes that Jim Ede introduced Roy to Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst – founders of Dartington Hall School – and continued to support Roy throughout his life. For example, she cites a letter from Ede to Leonard Elmhirst from 26 December 1970 that asked for a contribution towards the purchase of the leasehold on a flat in London for the artist.[5]

Roy died in 1975 in Hampstead, having lived in England for five decades, but few of the artists’ works are available in public collections in the UK. The beautiful pen and ink drawing from the collection at Kettle’s Yard appears to combine Indian figure drawing with the English landscape tradition, and two other works on paper at the National Gallery of Scotland (also gifts from Jim Ede) demonstrate a highly sensitive and finely delineated use of colour, deployed – coincidently – for an image of a ‘kettle’ in a fireplace.

Abani Roy, Fire and Kettle within a Fireplace, National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by Jim Ede 1977
Abani Roy, Fire and Kettle within a Fireplace, National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by Jim Ede 1977

Abani Roy at Kettle’s Yard

Indian Scene (n.d.) in the Kettle’s Yard collection.

© The Estate of Abani Roy. Photo: Kettle's Yard

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Jim Ede and India Talk by Alina Khakoo

Hear more about Abani Roy in this recorded talk about Jim Ede and India by Alina Khakoo.

Jim Ede and India Talk by Alina Khakoo
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Jim Ede and India Display

During our exhibition Homelands, curatorial assistant Alina Khakoo explored the relationship between Jim Ede, founder of Kettle’s Yard, and South Asia.

Jim Ede and India Display
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Footnotes

[1] ‘Second Round-Table Conference: Copperplate Engraving’, The Times, 19 July 1938, p. 12.

[2] J.R.M. Butler, Lord Lothian (London: Macmillan and Co., 1960) p. 245.

[3] Sarah Victoria Turner and Mark Hallet, The Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition: A Chronicle, 1769-2018 (2018) https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/publications/browse/ra-chronicle [accessed 24 July 2024

[4] P.B., ‘Summer Exhibition of the Royal Academy’, Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 84, no. 4356, 15 May 1935, p. 701.

[5] H.S. Ede, letter to L.K. Elmhirst, 26 December 1970, Leonard Knight Elmhirst Papers LKE/G/1/F/1. See Elizabeth Fisher, ‘Kettle’s Yard: Anti-Museum – H.S. Ede, modernism and the experience of art’ (Doctoral thesis, Clare College, Cambridge, 2018) p. 97.