Pitcairn-Knowles, James

painter

born: 28.09.1863 in Rotterdam

died: 02.01.1954 in Hungen

Pitcairn-Knowles lived with his parents - his father was a Scottish wool merchant - in Wiesbaden from 1872 and attended the grammar school in Biebrich. In 1883 he studied at the Academy of Art in Munich under Carl Theodor von Piloty and Fritz von Uhde and attended the Académie Julian in Paris in 1887.

At the home of the painter Mihály Munkácsy, he met József Rippl-Rónai, who later became the most famous Hungarian painter of classical modernism. He formed a deep friendship with him, as well as with the sculptor Aristide Maillol. Around 1888, Pitcairn-Knowles and Rippl-Rónai came into contact with the Nabis artists' group, into whose community they were both accepted. Pitcairn-Knowles returned to Wiesbaden at the beginning of the 1890s. Together with Rippl-Rónai, he designed glass works for the dining room of the Tiszadob castle of a Hungarian count, which were produced in Wiesbaden in 1897/98 under the supervision of both artists.

Pitcairn-Knowles settled in Wiesbaden in 1902. He bought land near Dotzheim for the construction of Freudenberg Palace, which he had built in 1904 in the middle of a park by architect Paul Schultze-Naumburg. He lived there from 1905-08. In 1912, an exhibition was held in Wiesbaden at the Kunstsalon Aktuaryus, which made Pitcairn-Knowles known as a "painter of elegant women", as the art historian Mela Escherich put it. In her opinion, Pitcairn-Knowles could not be assigned to any particular school. From today's perspective, he would be described as leaning towards Art Nouveau during his time in Wiesbaden, which he also followed in his decorative arts work in the field of book decoration and ornamental glasswork. He sold Schloss Freudenberg in 1912.

Esteemed as a portraitist, Pitcairn-Knowles spent the rest of his life at Hungen Castle. In 2004, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, the Ernst Múzeum in Budapest organized an exhibition in memory of him and his Hungarian painter friend Rippl-Rónai.