Ways of Life: Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard Artists

by Laura Freeman

This first biography of the Kettle's Yard artists reveals the life of a visionary who helped shape twentieth-century British art and explores a thrilling moment in the history of modernism

'The beautiful, revelatory biography we have been waiting for. I loved it'
EDMUND DE WAAL
'This book is the legacy Jim Ede might have wished for'
OBSERVER

The lives of Jim Ede and the Kettle's Yard artists represent a thrilling tipping point in twentieth-century modernism: a new guard, a new way of making and seeing, and a new way of living with art. The artists Ben and Winifred Nicholson, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Alfred Wallis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska were not a set like the Bloomsbury Set or Ravilious and his friends. But Jim Ede recognised in each of the artists he championed something common and kindred, some quality of light and life and line.

Jim Ede is the figure who unites them. His vision continues to influence the way we understand art and modern living. He was a man of extraordinary energies: a collector, dealer, fixer, critic and, above all, friend to artists. For Ede, works of art were friends and art could be found wherever you looked - in a pebble, feather or seedhead. Art lived and a life without art, beauty, friendship and creativity was a life not worth living. Art was not for galleries alone and it certainly wasn't only for the rich. At Kettle's Yard in Cambridge, he opened his home and his collection to all comers. He showed generations of visitors that learning to look could be a whole new way of life.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction

377 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 18, 2023

About the author

Laura Freeman is chief art critic of The Times. She has written for the Spectator, Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, TLS, Apollo and World of Interiors. Her first book The Reading Cure, a memoir about hunger and happiness, addiction, obsession and recovery, was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2018. She studied history of art at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

Reviews

[Kitty · Rating 5 out of 5]

A biography of Jim Ede, of Kettle’s Yard fame. How extraordinary that he has not been written about before, considering he befriended and supported so many of the key artists of European Modernism from Alfred Wallis and Ben Nicholson to Juan Miro, Naum Gabo, Gaudier-Brzezska and Brancusi. And then lived so simply in four converted slum cottages in Cambridge, sharing his passion for art and inspiring generations of students. Laura Freeman writes beautifully and brings together so many personal letters and memories of Jim that you get a really distinct sense of the sort of person he was. He was, as she writes, 'kind and devoted and flawed'; someone who never really fitted in but was so generous with his support and encouragement to artists - and later students. I love the structure of the book which is in short chapters each headed with a different artwork from Kettle's Yard which is the starting point for a distinct event or period in his long life.

[Cherry W · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have visited Kettle’s Yard many times and always love going there. This book gave me an insight into Jim Ede’s life and some of the items in his collection.
I found the book slightly too detailed at times, and felt it could have been condensed without losing any interest, hence the four stars, otherwise a five.

[Peter Swanson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not that many years ago, I discovered Kettle's Yard. It instantly became one of my favourite art museums, although "people would persist in saying that Kettle's Yard wasn't a 'proper museum' - and surely the whole point of the place was that it wasn't a proper museum." Kettle's Yard is in Cambridge, and I am embarrassed to admit that despite going to the University in the late 70's and being a persistent visitor to the city ever since, it took me until my seventh decade before I first visited it, and started a love affair with it.

I have revisited it numerous times since, as it has this element of sanctuary and peace about it which is consoling and regenerative. I have been there just to sit contemplatively. Kettle's Yard is the invention and the home of Jim Ede, and this is his story - of which Kettle's Yard is only a part. It is hard to describe what Jim did for a living; art critic, curator, lecturer, author, patron, &c. But perhaps best described as "friend to artists". He was eccentric, disliked authority, had often boundless energy, and many foibles.

Laura Freeman has done a most wonderful job with this biography, telling Jim's story and his relationships with those artists (Ben Nicholson, Winifred Nicholson, Christopher Wood, Alfred Wallis, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, David Jones, and more), his travels and his lifestyle, his war experiences and writings. These elements build to form his philosophy guiding the creation of Kettle's Yard, where art is shared in an informal and serene environment. Sadly I missed the opportunity to take advantage of his personal tours of the collection to students from the University of Cambridge over afternoon tea. Students could also borrow paintings from his collection to hang in their rooms during term-time. In my era, I was a little late and much too naive to take advantage of this.

Jim Ede was a beautiful man, who saw the beauty and art in simple things, and was extraordinarily generous in sharing that beauty. This book made me cry.

"I hope this book brings Jim a little to life, kind and devoted and flawed. What is china without its cracks? I hope, if you are not already, that you will become a Kettle's Yard familiar. I hope that the next time you go to Kettle's Yard you will bring a friend." Indeed.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you for writing this book, Laura Freeman. My curiosity about this place I love has grown even more, thanks to the history you give about the Edes and the times Jim lived in and the world he created. When I started reading, I feared that maybe you revered Jim Ede a bit too much; however, as I read on, I realized that you came to understand him as a special person who could be very difficult to live with (even at a great distance, through correspondence). Your portrait of Jim is a sympathetic and kind one, sensitive to the times then and now, and I think your deep understanding, respect and affection shines through. This is a book I am going to recommend to all my friends and family.

[Sara Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

Requested from the library as I love Kettles Yard and wanted to find out more about the man behind it and how it came to be. I got to somewhere around page 70, and realised I had got everything out of it that I needed, without having to read more. I’m not a great biography fan, and this was just too painstakingly minutely detailed for me. I think I shall go back to loving Kettles Yard simply for what it is.

[Sean Auraist · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Auraist substack is a recommendation service that identifies the best-written books from prize shortlists, end-of-year lists, and major reviews. Ways of Life was one of our picks for the best-written nonfiction books of the summer. Read an extract at https://auraist.substack.com/p/nonfic.... Subscriptions are currently free.

[Taff Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Me and my sixth form girlfriend used to hang out in Kettles Yard in the late 1970s. We usually sat on the sofa by the dancing girl and over seeing how the shadow moved across the wall as the afternoon progressed. The house affected and influenced me enormously and this book paid it the highest respect, telling the full background story which I’d only known crumbs of. It moved me to tears.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating account of the life of H S Ede, better known as Jim Ede. The man who made Kettle’s Yard.
Not only is it a good read, it is also a properly bound book, which adds to the reading pleasure.

[A J HOOPER · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meticulously researched biography of Jim Ede who put together Kettles Yard in Cambridge . Jim for a major chunk of the 20th century was the friend and promoter of artists. And he knew them all. Having visited Kettles Yard twice I was intrigued to hear how he had managed to amass such a personal and eclectic collection.
I lived in Hampstead for 60 years and overlapped this with much time in St Ives, Cornwall. Jim lived up the road from me for some of this time So too did his artist friends. Unsurprising therefore that Jim's aesthetic tastes are like mine.
I loved his arrangements of pebbles. I'm full of admiration for the pictures of Alfred Wallis, the retired seaman who took up painting (the naive type) in his 70s. My St Ives time has more than made me appreciate the St Ives School of Painting.
Jim the collector was a terrific character. However reading between the lines, his restless networking which was so engaging when he was young, I quite see must have been irritating in his old age. You can understand why Henry Moore began to feel hunted.
Jim's sexual nature is briefly described as homosexual but Jim maintained a loving relationship with Helen his wife, until she died, in his arms incidentally. She accompanied him everywhere plus they produced two daughters. Helen herself, in old age, declared that she had had a marvellous life with Jim. Freeman describing this makes it very clear that sex isn't everything but love obviously is.