Monkton House, West Dean

Monkton House, West Dean, West Sussex is an English country house designed in 1902 by Edwin Lutyens for Willie James. It was extensively remodelled for his son, Edward James, in the 1930s. Working with Christopher Nicholson and Hugh Casson, and assisted by Salvador Dalí, James constructed what has been called "the only complete Surrealist house ever created in Britain". The collection of Surrealist art and furniture which James assembled at the house, much of it by Dalí himself, was "one of the largest and most important in the world". A private residence, Monkton is a Grade II listed building.

Monkton House
"the only complete Surrealist house ever created in Britain"
TypeHouse
LocationWest Dean, West Sussex
Coordinates50°57′00″N 0°49′09″W
Built1902-03. Surrealist remodelling c. 1930 by Christopher Nicholson, Hugh Casson and Salvador Dalí for Edward James
ArchitectEdwin Lutyens
Governing bodyPrivately owned
Listed Building – Grade II
Official nameMonkton House
Designated20 September 1985
Reference no.1026127
Monkton House, West Dean is located in West Sussex
Monkton House, West Dean
Location of Monkton House in West Sussex

History

Willie James (1854–1912) was the third son of Daniel James (1801–1876), an American-born businessman who had made his fortune as a founder of the trading firm Phelps Dodge and moved to Liverpool to manage the English end of the firm's operations.[1] Willie eschewed a business career, and following a youth spent travelling, established himself as a country gentleman, purchasing the West Dean estate in 1891. In 1902 he commissioned Edwin Lutyens to design Monkton House as a shooting lodge. The house acted as a trianon to the larger property.[lower-alpha 1][5] James' wife, Mrs Willie James was a noted Edwardian hostess and the Prince of Wales was a regular visitor.[lower-alpha 2][7]

Willie James died in 1912, and was succeeded by his son Edward, then a boy of five. Marrying, and subsequently divorcing, the dancer Tilly Losch, the bisexual James' greatest passion was Surrealism.[8] An early supporter of Salvador Dalí, he engaged Christopher Nicholson and Hugh Casson to redesign Monkton and employed Dalí to decorate the interiors.[9] Designed in extreme reaction to Lutyens' "cottage-y" style,[10] Monkton has been described as "the only complete Surrealist house ever created in Britain".[11] James stopped living at Monkton in the 1930s, returning for only brief visits, and the interior was left largely untouched.[12] In later years James used the house to store the contents of other houses he had acquired.[13]

James established the Edward James Foundation in 1964 and founded West Dean College in 1971.[14] The college teaches courses in historic crafts and preservation. James sold some of his surrealist paintings to fund the college.[lower-alpha 3][14] On James' death in 1984, Monkton House passed to the Edward James Foundation.[14]

Sale

In 1986 the foundation announced it intended to sell the house and its contents. The foundation’s trustees insisted that the sale was financially necessary,[15] Christopher Gibbs saying that they "[couldn't] go into an open ended liability running a museum of surrealism".[15] A campaign, 'The Monkton Appeal', was launched by The Thirties Society and Save Britain's Heritage to purchase both for the nation, with the aim of raising £1.6 million (equivalent to £4,987,577 in 2021) by June 1986.[16][17] The two groups secured a commitment from English Heritage to run the house and open it to the public if £650,000 could be found for the house and an additional £950,000 to purchase its contents.[12] The chairman of English Heritage, Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, said that he was prepared for his body to run the house at an estimated cost of £50,000 a year provided the £1.6 million purchase cost had already been raised.[15] In April the National Heritage Memorial Fund declined to make any contribution to the purchase price.[18] This was a major blow to the campaign, which had expected the fund to assist them.[18] The fund's director, Brian Lang, considered that the public benefit gained from saving Monkton was "a bit marginal".[19]

Some of the leading architectural historians of the day, including Clive Aslet, Mark Girouard, and Gavin Stamp, strongly disagreed and vocally opposed the sale. Girouard described the creation of the house as "a dream expressed in three dimensions".[12] Aslet said that it was difficult for outside organisations to raise the money to buy the house and its contents as the sale had been "pushed so quickly" by the foundation.[12] Stamp mourned the loss: "had this ensemble not been broken up, Britain could now boast the finest collection of Surrealist art in the world".[20] The architect Hugh Casson, who had worked on the house in the 1930s, was also opposed.[18] Conversely, the architectural historian John Cornforth considered that Monkton did not merit saving and his views were perceived as particularly influential in the failure of the campaign.[lower-alpha 4][21]

A five-day auction of the contents of Monkton, described as "The Edward James Collection", was held by Christie's in June 1986 on the lawn of West Dean College. It raised £4,516,544 (equivalent to £14,079,132 in 2021).[22][23][24] The prints, drawings and paintings raised almost £1 million.[22] A 1936 painting by Max Ernst went for £64,800 despite having failed to sell at auction twice in previous years.[22] The proceeds went to the endowment fund of West Dean College.[22]

Monkton House itself was put on the market, with 66 acres of woodland and a cottage, for £750,000 in June 1986 (equivalent to £2,337,927 in 2021).[22] It was bought by Simon Draper, the former chairman of Virgin Records.[25] The house came with an aviary and James's collection of pheasants. Draper had unhappy memories of pheasants from his schooldays in South Africa, and asked the Edward James Foundation to take them away. The birds were re-homed at Beale Wildlife Park in Berkshire.[25] Draper subsequently changed his mind and decided to re-establish the pheasant population at Monkton, and contacted the World Pheasant Association in Shepperton who assisted him with starting a breeding programme.[25] In 1997 Draper's publishing company, Palawan Press, published The Atlas of Rare Pheasants in an edition of 48, illustrated by Timothy Greenwood.[25]

Monkton was featured in Country Life magazine in their 12 September 1985 issue.[4] The house was profiled by George Melly in Monkton – A Surrealist Dream, broadcast on Channel 4 in May 1986.[26] The head gardener for 15 years was Ivan Hicks,[27] who also worked with James on the creation of his gardens in Italy and Las Pozas in Mexico.[27]

Architecture and interior description

Monkton House has been listed Grade II on the National Heritage List for England since September 1985.[4] Lutyens designed the building in brick, but during Edward James' renovations, this was rendered in purple stucco at the suggestion of Dalí.[28] Of two storeys, with multiple balconies, the exterior exhibits a number of unusual, Dalí-esque features, such as the drain pipes which are supported by palm tree columns.[4] An external clock at the house tells the days of the week and an external chimney is shaped like a tombstone.[26] Moulded draperies resembling billowing, drying linen hang from the upper windows.[26]

The interior decoration was ordered by James and Norris Wakefield.[28] It was noted for its extensive use of textiles; the walls of the drawing room are covered with a quilted fabric.[28] The Map Room featured a bed upholstered in blue silk,[28] which was sold at auction at Phillips in April 2018.[28] A glass panel in the centre of the ceiling of the map room was backlit with stars that were "positioned to represent the moment of James' birth".[28] One bathroom was themed around fish.[28] James's own bed was a replica of Napoleon's hearse.[lower-alpha 5][13] A poem written and illustrated by James as an obituary for his friend Evelyn Waugh hung on the back staircase of the house.[13] James's biographer Philip Purser described the cumulative effect as resembling "a mad potentate's private brothel".[14]

The interior included many pieces by Dalí, in particular his Mae West Lips Sofa,[lower-alpha 6][33] his Lobster Telephone[34] and his Champagne Standard Lamps.[lower-alpha 7][11] Other pieces included the Drowning Hands Chair,[lower-alpha 8][14] and the Pink Glove Tea Service.[38][39] They were mainly commissioned from the designers Green & Abbott, who worked with Syrie Maugham on their realisation.[23] A staircase carpet originally at the house was embroidered with the outline of the wet footprints made by Tilly Losch when she ran naked from a bathroom to her bedroom. Following their divorce, James moved the carpet to West Dean (where it remains), and replaced it with one embroidered with the footprints of his dog, whom James maintained had exhibited greater loyalty.[lower-alpha 9][41][42] The Victoria and Albert Museum, which ultimately acquired one of the pairs of lamps, and one of the Mae West Lips sofas,[43] described James as a "key figure in the promotion and international recognition of Surrealism", and considered his collection, much of which was once held at Monkton, "one of the largest and most important in the world".[44]

Footnotes
  1. Edward James later planned his own trianon in the West Dean grounds. In the late 1930s, he acquired the façade of the London Pantheon, designed by James Wyatt in the 1770s, and asked Christopher Nicholson to design a pavilion incorporating the façade. The outbreak of war ended the endeavour, and the Pantheon elements were subsequently destroyed.[2][3] However, Historic England suggests that the palm trees added to the Monkton House façade may have originally been part of the Pantheon's structure.[4]
  2. Edward VII is reputed to have stayed at West Dean from 1898, after his usual host for the Goodwood Races, Charles Gordon-Lennox, 6th Duke of Richmond had declined to receive Alice Keppel, Edward's mistress, at Goodwood House.[6]
  3. James sometimes expressed resentment at the level of funding the college required, and the uses to which his money was put; "I didn’t give away my inheritance so that a middle-class couple, bored of watching television, could spend a weekend learning to make corn dollies for less than it would cost them to stay at a hotel in Torquay".[14]
  4. John Cornforth established his name by a series of books and articles on the English country house written in the 1960s and 1970s, and served as an advisor to the National Trust's Historic Buildings Committee, that determined which country houses the trust should accept. He acted in a similar capacity for the Historic Buildings Council for England. As such, his views on which buildings warranted saving and which did not were highly influential. Unfortunately for Monkton, as Cornforth’s obituarist noted, he "never much cared for Victorian houses and had a positive antipathy to Edward James' Surrealist reworking of Lutyens' Monkton House".[21]
  5. Other sources suggest Nelson's hearse as the inspiration.[29]
  6. One of the Mae West sofas fetched £725,000 at auction at Christie's in 2016, against an estimate of £250,000-400,000.[30] Dalí produced five sofas in total, two pairs in red wool, one with black fringing, and a single in pink satin. The unfringed red pair and the single were designed for Wimpole Street, while the other red pair was placed in the dining toom at Monkton House, either side of the Champagne Standard Lamps.[31] The design has been much copied subsequently.[32]
  7. The Department of Culture, Media and Sport placed an export ban on the Champagne Standard Lamps in an effort to prevent their being sold abroad.[35]
  8. The Drowning Hands, or Cat's Cradle, chair was reputedly inspired by Tilly Losch's Dance of the Hands, a performance piece she created in partnership with the actress Hedy Pfundmayer for the Salzburg Festival in 1927.[36][37]
  9. Dalí's suggestion that the walls of the dining room at James' London house, 35 Wimpole Street,[40] be covered in dog hair and designed to expand and contract, in imitation of a sick dog's stomach, was not taken forward.[33]

References
  1. "John Arthur James (1853–1917) and Mary Venetia James (1861–1948)". National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  2. Charman 2014, p. 6.
  3. Historic England. "Pantheon (Marks and Spencers) (Grade II) (1393442)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  4. Historic England. "Monkton House (Grade II) (1026127)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  5. "Design for alterations and additions to Monkton House, West Dean". RIBA. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  6. Kusunoki, Sharon-Michi. "Whistler while you work". The Lady. Retrieved 19 October 2023.
  7. Historic England. "West Dean College (Grade II*) (1026116)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 16 October 2023.
  8. Gray, Francine du Plessix (24 September 2007). "The Surrealists' Muse". New Yorker. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  9. Hale, Sheila (17 April 1986). "Battle over an improbable house". New York Times. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  10. McKenzie Johnston, Fiona (20 January 2023). "Beauty, repulsiveness, and practicality: why you should be embracing the Surrealist interior". House and Garden. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  11. "Pair of Champagne Standard Lamps" (PDF). Arts Council England. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  12. Bailey, Martin (16 February 1986). "Appeal to save house of dreams". The Observer. p. 3. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  13. Norman, Geraldine (8 February 1986). "Golden hoard of verse". The Times. No. 62375. p. 8. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  14. Turner, Christopher (April 2001). "The Surreal life of Edward James". Apollo (magazine). Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  15. Bedlow, Robert (8 March 1986). "£1.6m plea to save folly". The Daily Telegraph. p. 23. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  16. Powers, Alan (1996). "A Zebra at Villa Savoye: Interpreting the Modern House". Twentieth Century Architecture. 2: 16–26. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  17. Pick, Michael (1987). "Edward James in Wimpole Street". Thirties Society Journal. 6: 42–47. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  18. Addis, Richard (25 April 1986). "Amused rescuer is still hoped for". The Evening Standard. p. 6. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  19. Vulliamy, Edward (26 April 1986). "Cash denial may lose surrealist memory". The Guardian. p. 4. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  20. "West Dean Park". DiCamillo. Retrieved 16 October 2023.
  21. "Obituary: John Cornforth". The Daily Telegraph. 10 March 2004. p. 23. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  22. Nurse, Keith (9 June 1986). "At Auction: James Collection". The Daily Telegraph. p. 15. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  23. O'Hanlan, Sean. "Edward James". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  24. Darbyshire, Tom (10 September 2022). "Ready for a night of surreal dreams". Antiques Trade Gazette. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  25. Heald, Tim (20 September 1997). "The pheasant's biggest fan". The Daily Telegraph. p. 178. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  26. "The house of surrealist dreams". The Sunday Telegraph. 25 May 1986. p. 15. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  27. Rose, Graham (25 March 1995). "The New English Country Garden". The Times. No. 65224. p. 37-39. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  28. "Edward James and Norris Wakefield: Important and unique bed, designed for the Map Room, Monkton House, West Sussex". Phillips de Pury. Archived from the original on 27 June 2022. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  29. Kennedy, Maev (16 October 2016). "Salvador Dalí's lobster telephone and Mae West lips sofa to be sold at auction". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  30. "Mae West Lips Sofa". Christie's. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  31. Gott, Ted. "Salvador Dalí: Mae West's lips". National Gallery of Victoria. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  32. Martin, Hannah (4 October 2019). "The Story Behind Dalí's Iconic Lips Sofas". Architectural Digest. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  33. Turner, Christopher (1 May 2021). "The Surreal life of Edward James". Apollo. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  34. "Goodwood - Sussex Modern". Goodwood Estate. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  35. "Dalí's Champagne Standard Lamps at risk of leaving the UK". GOV.UK. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  36. "Dance of Hands. Tilly Losch and Hedy Pfundmayr in Photographs 1920-1935". photography-now. 9 September 2015. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  37. "6 Surrealist Chairs from the Objects Of Desire exhibition". Design Museum. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  38. Smith, Philip. "Salvador Dalí's 'Pink Glove' Plate". Lyon & Turnbull. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  39. "A Royal Crown Derby Bone China Teapot by Salvador Dalí'". Batemans Auctioneers. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  40. "House for Edward James, 35 Wimpole Street". RIBA. Retrieved 18 October 2023.
  41. Nash, Deborah (1 August 2022). "The home in 50 objects from around the world: a Surrealist carpet". Financial Times. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  42. Watson-Smyth, Kate (4 September 2014). "Metal Foorprints". Mad about the House. Retrieved 15 October 2023.
  43. "V&A acquires pair of Champagne Standard Lamps designed by Salvador Dalí and Edward James". National Heritage Memorial Fund. 14 March 2019. Retrieved 16 October 2023.
  44. "Floor Lamp - 1938". Victoria and Albert Museum. Retrieved 16 October 2023.

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