The Radev Collection is a private art collection comprising more than 800 works by Impressionist and Modernist artists including Georges Braque, Picasso, Mogdigliani, Duncan Grant, Frances Hodgkins, Ben Nicholson, and Lucien Pissarro.Jennings, Clive (14 June 2013) Retrieved 8 October 2020The Radev Collection. Artists
Retrieved 9 October 2020 It is named after the Bulgarian émigré Mattei Radev, a picture framer and art collector, who moved in the social circles of the

Bloomsbury group The Bloomsbury Group was a group of associated British writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century. Among the people involved in the group were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, a ...

. It originated with music critic

Edward Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville Edward Charles Sackville-West, 5th Baron Sackville (13 November 1901 – 4 July 1965) was a British music critic, novelist and, in his last years, a member of the House of Lords. Musically gifted as a boy, he was attracted as a young man to a li ...

, who began the collection in 1938. It was inherited by the artist and art dealer Eardley Knollys in 1965 and later by Radev in 1991.Owen, Nick (22 September 2011) Retrieved 8 October 2020

History

Radev ran a picture framing business in London and was a lover of the writer E.M. Forster, with whom he began an affair in 1960. Retrieved 8 October 2020 He arrived in Britain in 1950 after escaping

communist Bulgaria The People's Republic of Bulgaria (PRB; , NRB; ) was the official name of Bulgaria when it was a socialist state, socialist republic from 1946 to 1990, ruled by the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP; ) together with its coalition partner, the Bul ...

by swimming across a river to Turkey, and then hiding in the lifeboat of a cargo ship travelling from Istanbul to Glasgow, where he was able to claim asylum. He later moved to London, where while working as an orderly at

Whittington Hospital Whittington Hospital is a district general hospital, district general and teaching hospital of UCL Medical School and Middlesex University School of Health and Social Sciences. Located in Archway, London, it is managed by Whittington Health NH ...

, he met the early gay activist and noted eye surgeon Patrick Trevor-Roper, who introduced him to the artistic circles of London. Radev undertook a picture framing apprenticeship and later set up his own framing business and workshop in

Fitzrovia Fitzrovia ( ) is a district of central London, England, near the West End. Its eastern part is in the London Borough of Camden, and the western in the City of Westminster. It has its roots in the Manor of Tottenham Court, and was urbanised in ...

, London in 1960, with a loan from Eardley Knollys, a friend who he had met in 1957.Machin, Julian (14 October 2009)
Mattei Radev: Mainstay of the Bloomsbury artistic society, who had a tortured relationship with E.M. Forster
bituary In

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

. Retrieved 9 October 2020 His business was successful and he later set up a second shop. His distinguished customers included

Vanessa Bell Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen). Early life and education Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...

Duncan Grant Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a Scottish painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets, and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major ...

Graham Sutherland Graham Vivian Sutherland (24 August 1903 – 17 February 1980) was a prolific English artist. Notable for his paintings of abstract landscapes and for his portraits of public figures, Sutherland also worked in other media, including printmakin ...

John Banting John Banting (12 May 1902 – 30 January 1972) was an English Surrealist artist and writer associated with the Bloomsbury Group, whose left-wing philosophy was reflected in much of his work. According to his ''Times'' obituary, he was "an artist ...

and

Princess Michael of Kent Princess Michael of Kent (born Baroness Marie-Christine Anna Agnes Hedwig Ida von Reibnitz, 15 January 1945) is a member of the British royal family. She is married to Prince Michael of Kent, who is a grandson of George V, King George V. Prince ...

, who at that time was working as an interior designer. Radev ran the business until the early 1990s when he sold it. He kept ownership of his original framing workshop building, which he used as his private home and where he displayed his art collection, which was not open to the public. Radev's friend Eardley Knollys ran the

Storran Gallery The Storran Gallery was a fashionable ''avant-garde'' art gallery in London in the 1930s. In 1937 it was run by the prominent art critic Eardley Knollys (a friend of Picasso) with Ala Story and the artist Frank Coombs (artist), Frank Coombs (1906 ...

in London with his partner Frank Coombs from 1936 and 1944. They sold works by artists such as

Amedeo Modigliani Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (; ; 12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor of the École de Paris who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern art, modern style characterized by a surre ...

Maurice Utrillo Maurice Utrillo (; born Maurice Valadon; 26 December 1883 – 5 November 1955) was a French painter of the School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. From the Montmartre quarter of Paris, France, Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of ...

and

Chaïm Soutine Chaïm Soutine (; ; ; 13 January 1893 – 9 August 1943) was a French painter of Belarusian-Jewish origin of the School of Paris, who made a major contribution to the Expressionist movement while living and working in Paris. Inspired by clas ...

. Coombs was killed in an air raid in

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

in 1941, which led to Knollys closing the gallery in 1944. Edward Sackville-West, who had briefly been Knollys' lover when they were students at Oxford University in the early 1920s, later became a lifelong friend. In 1945, Knollys, Sackville-West and the music critic Desmond Shawe-Taylor together bought a Georgian rectory at Long Crichel, Dorset, where they held weekend salons, attended by some of the most notable cultural figures of the period, including

Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, o ...

Nancy Mitford Nancy Freeman-Mitford (28 November 1904 – 30 June 1973) was an English novelist, biographer, and journalist. The eldest of the Mitford family#Mitford sisters, Mitford sisters, she was regarded as one of the "bright young things" on the ...

Graham Greene Henry Graham Greene (2 October 1904 – 3 April 1991) was an English writer and journalist regarded by many as one of the leading novelists of the 20th century. Combining literary acclaim with widespread popularity, Greene acquired a re ...

and

Somerset Maugham William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...

. Radev often visited; it was there that he met E.M. Forster. Paintings from the collection were kept there. When Sackville-West died unexpectedly in 1965, aged 63, Knollys inherited the art works he had been collecting since 1938 and added them to his own art collection. Knollys and Radev bought a former hunting lodge in

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

in 1967, which had an artist's studio where they both painted. They used the lodge as a country retreat until Knollys' death in 1991 and bought additional paintings for the collection. The collection was then inherited by Radev. Radev died in 2009, survived by his

civil partner Civil partnership in the United Kingdom is a form of civil union between couples open to both same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples. It was introduced via the ''Civil Partnership Act 2004'' by the Labour government. The Act initially per ...

. Selected works from the collection were made available online in 2011 and selected paintings were exhibited in London and other locations in England between 2011 and 2013. As at October 2020, The Radev Collection website is no longer live, although parts of it have been preserved by the

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

. The collection has made a return to public viewing at The Wilson Art Gallery, Cheltenham in the UK from 8 March through to 1 September 2024 along with exhibits covering the life of Radev and the history of the collection itself.

The Collection

Although the collection largely consists of works collected by Sackville-West and Knollys, each of the three men added to what eventually became a collection that numbered in the hundreds, but was never fully catalogued. It reflects their different tastes: Sackville-West for

Modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

, Knollys for

French impressionists Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject ...

and Radev for the modern British artists with whom he worked and from whom he bought works directly. It includes works by over 65 artists, such as Vanessa Bell,

Georges Braque Georges Braque ( ; ; 13 May 1882 – 31 August 1963) was a major 20th-century List of French artists, French painter, Collage, collagist, Drawing, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most notable contributions were in his alliance with ...

Eugène Boudin Eugène Louis Boudin (; 12 July 1824 – 8 August 1898) was one of the first French landscape painters to paint outdoors. Boudin was a marine painter, and expert in the rendering of all that goes upon the sea and along its shores. His pastels, ...

Henri Gaudier-Brzeska Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (né Gaudier; 4 October 1891 – 5 June 1915) was a French artist and sculptor who developed a rough-hewn, primitive style of direct carving. Biography Henri Gaudier was born in Saint-Jean-de-Braye near Orléans. In 1910, ...

Maurice Denis Maurice Denis (; 25 November 1870 – 13 November 1943) was a French painter, decorative artist, and writer. An important figure in the transitional period between impressionism and modern art, he is associated with '' Les Nabis'', symbolism, ...

, Duncan Grant,

Frances Hodgkins Frances Mary Hodgkins (28 April 1869 – 13 May 1947) was a New Zealand painter chiefly of landscape, and for a short period was a designer of textiles. Born in Dunedin, she was educated Dunedin School of Art, then became an art teacher, ...

Ben Nicholson Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM (10 April 1894 – 6 February 1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscapes, and still-life. He was one of the leading promoters of abstract art in England. Backg ...

Pablo Picasso Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, Ceramic art, ceramicist, and Scenic ...

Lucien Pissarro Lucien Pissarro (20 February 1863 – 10 July 1944) was a French landscape painter, printmaker, wood engraver, designer, and printer of fine books. His landscape paintings employ techniques of Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism, but he also ...

, Matthew Smith, Graham Sutherland, and

Alfred Wallis Alfred Wallis (18 August 1855 – 29 August 1942) was a British artist and fisherman, known for his port landscapes and shipping scenes painted in a naïve style. Having no artistic training, he began painting at the age of 70, using househo ...

, many of whom were known personally by the three men who put the collection together. It includes works by Radev and Knollys, and portraits of each of them by Duncan Grant. It also has works by Knollys' late partner, Frank Coombs. One of the notable works is ''Two Male Nudes'' (1946) by Keith Vaughan, which was given to E.M. Forster by

Christopher Isherwood Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood (26 August 1904 – 4 January 1986) was an Anglo-American novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. His best-known works include '' Goodbye to Berlin'' (1939), a semi-autobiographical ...

. Forster later gave it to Radev, who he was in love with. Radev only ever sold one painting from the collection he inherited, ''Portrait de Lagar'', a Modigliani from 1915.The Radev Collection.History
Retrieved 8 October 2020

References

External links

The Radev Collection
- selected pages on

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 2001, the service allows users to go "back in ...

(The Internet Archive)
The Radev Collection on Vimeo
(18:13 min) - Curator Julian Machin and Richard Shone, editor of

The Burlington Magazine ''The Burlington Magazine'' is a monthly publication that covers the fine and decorative arts of all periods. Established in 1903, it is the longest running art journal in the English language. It has been published by a charitable organisation s ...

, discuss and view the works. {{DEFAULTSORT:Radev Collection Private art collections Bloomsbury Group art Bloomsbury Group in LGBTQ history LGBTQ history in the United Kingdom LGBTQ culture in the United Kingdom

History

The Collection

Further reading

References

External links