Timeline

1894

Helene Schlapp is born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the daughter of Anna (née Lotze), a musician, and Otto Schlapp, Professor of German at Edinburgh University.

1895

Harold Stanley (known as Jim) Ede is born in Penarth, near Cardiff, the son of Edward Hornby Ede, a solicitor, and Mildred Ede (née Blanch), a schoolteacher.

1903

As a teenager, Jim goes to school in Caen, France for a year, and then attends the Leys School in Cambridge. He left school aged 15 and a half, due to illness.

Helene is raised in an artistic and musical family at 54a George Square in Edinburgh where she learns to play the piano.

1910-11

Jim studies painting at Stanhope Forbes’ academy in Newlyn, Cornwall and then at Edinburgh School of Art. In Edinburgh, he meets Helene Schlapp, who studies at the School of Art from 1911.

Listen below to the Edes’ daughter, Elisabeth Swan, describing how her parents met.

1914

Jim Ede serves as an officer on the Western Front during the First World War and writes to Helene every week.

1916

Wounded and experiencing combat stress reaction, known as ‘shell shock’, Jim Ede returns to Cambridge to recruit and train officer cadets at Trinity College. While there, he maintains an open invitation to guests three nights a week.

1917

Helen (who drops the last ‘e’ from her name) gains her diploma from the preliminary course at the Edinburgh College of Art, gaining high marks in drawing from the antique and anatomy, still life painting, and in the written paper on history and technique.

Jim departs Devonport, Plymouth on the RMS Ormonde. He is bound for India to serve with the Second Battalion of the 34th Sikh Pioneers. He docks in Mumbai (then Bombay), and spends fourteen months in India.

1921

Helen and Jim marry at the Chelsea Registry Office in London in January. Jim studies at the Slade School of Fine Art but leaves to become a Photographic Assistant at the National Gallery. Helen takes up the post of art teacher at King Alfred’s School, Hampstead. Their first daughter, Elisabeth, is born in November.

Listen below to Elisabeth describing the artists, writers, musicians and actors who visited the family when they lived at 1 Elm Row in Hampstead.

1922

Jim Ede takes up a curatorial post at the National Gallery, Millbank (commonly referred to as the Tate Gallery) and acts as Secretary to the Contemporary Art Society. He makes regular trips to Europe, including to Amsterdam where in October 1923 he meets Johanna Bonger, the widow of Vincent van Gogh’s brother Theo. She shows Ede many of Van Gogh’s works which he hopes – in vain – the National Gallery might consider for acquisition.

1924

Jim and Helen Ede meet Ben and Winifred Nicholson and later, through them, Christopher Wood. David Jones becomes a close friend and Jim begins to collect the work of these artists. The Edes’ second daughter, Mary is born in August.

1925

Jim and Helen move to a large house in Hampstead in April, where they keep an open house on Sunday afternoons hosting artists, politicians and aristocrats.

1927

Jim Ede visits Paris often during the late 1920s. He meets artists including Constantin Brâncuşi, Joan Miró, Marc Chagall and Pablo Picasso. Brâncuşi’s sculpture studio held a special resonance for Jim Ede, which he referred to as ‘nature’s workshop’ or a ‘cave of wonders’.

Jim Ede acquires the estates of French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska and his partner, writer Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska.

1929

Jim begins corresponding with Alfred Wallis and buying his paintings.

At the invitation of the artist Edward Wolfe, Jim and Helen travel to Tangier for a prolonged stay while Jim writes his Life of Gaudier-Brzeska, a biography based on the letters between Henri and Sophie Gaudier-Brzeska first published in limited edition in 1930.

1930

Jim Ede visits the United States of America for the first time, writing a diary of his time there for Helen. The trip left a lasting impression, as Ede recalled when he returned: ‘It was of the utmost interest to me now as I walked the streets of London, to see rising from them the ghosts of New York skyscrapers, to hear the sounds of that city mingle with those about me….’

1931

The Life of Gaudier-Brzeska is republished with the title Savage Messiah and becomes a best seller.

1932

Jim Ede organises a memorial exhibition of paintings by Christopher Wood at the Lefevre Galleries in April. Wood had died in 1930, and Ede assisted Wood’s family in their negotiations with Wood’s gallerist, Lucy Wertheim. Ede writes a foreword for the catalogue, describing Wood’s last paintings as ‘filled by a clear light’ and painted ‘with the easy naturalness and sureness of a person who has realised his vision.’

1936

Jim resigns from the Tate Gallery and from his position as Secretary of the Contemporary Art Society. He and Helen begin spending part of the year in Tangier, where they commission a modernist house known as Whitestone. Elisabeth and Mary accompany them 1937-38 then return to a boarding school in Edinburgh.

In the clip below Mary talks about her parents’ decision to move to Tangier.

1940

Accompanied by Helen, Jim travels to the United States to give a series of lecture tours in aid of the Allied War Relief Fund. Helen assists Jim in the planning and administration of the tour. It is during these visits that he befriends the artists Richard Pousette-Dart and William Congdon.

1943

The Edes return to Britain, spending time in Cardiff and Cambridge. They are involved in educational activities in support of the war effort.

1946

Jim and Helen return to Tangier to establish a scheme of weekend retreats for small groups of soldiers stationed at Gibraltar

1952

In April, Jim and Helen move to Les Charlottières, a farmhouse near Blois, in the Loire Valley, France. Jim travels to the United States for his last lecture tour.

1956

The Edes move to Cambridge in order to realise Jim’s final scheme – in his words, ‘to be lent a great house on the verge of a city – or a place of beauty in a town (Cambridge I have in mind) + make it all that I could  of lived in beauty, + each room an atmosphere of quiet and simple charm + open to the public (in Cambridge to students especially).’

1957

With help from the architect Rowland de Winton Aldridge, the Edes renovate four dilapidated nineteenth-century cottages, converting them into a single house. At the end of the year, the Edes’ new home, Kettle’s Yard, is opened to university students every weekday afternoon during term. Jim resumes collecting, and over the following years he befriends and acquires works by Italo Valenti, George Kennethson and Elisabeth Vellacott, among others.

1966

Kettle’s Yard is formally given to the University of Cambridge, although the Edes continue to live in the house. Jim is given the role of ‘honorary curator’.

Listen to an audio of Jim’s written introduction to Kettle’s Yard below.

1967

Jim is promoted to Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (having received the Légion d’Honneur in 1959) after making significant gifts of work by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska to French museums.

1970

An extension to the house and a small gallery, designed by Sir Leslie Martin and David Owers, is officially opened by Prince Charles with a performance by Daniel Barenboim and Jacqueline du Pré.

Listen to Jim and Helen’s daughter Elisabeth describe the opening party below.

1973

Jim and Helen Ede leave Cambridge and retire to Edinburgh. Jim begins visiting hospital patients at St Columba’s Hospice.

1977

After a long battle with cancer Helen dies at home in Edinburgh.

Listen to Helen’s daughter Elisabeth describe her below.

1990

Jim dies in 1990. A memorial plaque is installed in St Peter’s Church, next door to Kettle’s Yard. It was made by the Kindersley Workshop – working closely with the Edes’ daughters – from the hard-wearing limestone, Birds Eye.