James Pitcairn-Knowles

James Pitcairn-Knowles (28 September 1863 - 2 January 1954) was a painter, graphic artist, and sculptor of Scottish descent who spent most of his life in Germany.

William Knowles, the father of James, had originally come from Aberdeen and the surrounding area in the northeast of Scotland, but had become rich by trading in wool, grain and dry goods in Rotterdam.

[1] In 1862, after the death of his first wife, he married the opera singer Doris Kluge, a Jew whose parents owned a clothing store in Berlin.

Knowles and his two siblings, his sister Isabella—who died at the age of fifteen in 1865, and his brother de:Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles, were born in Rotterdam, where the family was registered with the British Embassy.

James Knowles had gone to the private Küngler Institute in Wiesbaden-Biebrich, but at the age of 18 his father sent him to Manchester to gain experience in the textile industry in order to eventually be able to aid his older stepbrother, William junior, in the family business in Rotterdam.

Having completed his training in Munich and Weimar, Knowles saw Laurens as the "right teacher [...], who keeps to the middle ground between the costume painting of the older school and the romanticism that has again flourished today with a move into medieval mysticism.

[3] In Paris he met other artists, like the Hungarian painter Mihály Munkácsy and the Viennese art dealer Charles Sedelmeyer, [6] from whom William Knowles had acquired paintings.

In 1897/98 Ronai designed coloured windows and a glass ceiling "with the participation of my friend Knowles in Wiesbaden", [16] where both were produced under the supervision of the artists.

There the couple held lavish parties and balls, which the local newspapers several times reported on as in, for example, a 1906 article: "With fairy-like lighting [...] a frugal supper took place in the evening , with toasts being made to the gracious hosts, Mr. J. Pitcairn-Knowles and his esteemed wife."

Fine, grey tones blend to the milky, sometimes increase slightly to the hue of yellowish or brownish marble or strive towards a breath-taking pink, subdued to the last degree of perceptibility. "

In the 1930s, according to the art historian Schenck zu Schweinsberg [23], “ Knowles distinguished himself with excellent observation, a concise, controlled, sharply modulated painting style limited to the representation of heads that were often overlapped by the frame.

[24] Accordingly, Knowles could not be assigned to any of the artistic isms, such as Expressionism or even the subsequent Verism, and thus escaped any restrictions by the National Socialists on painting.

When the 3rd US Armored Division appeared in the forest near Hungen in early January 1945, the eighty-two-year-old Knowles ran across the fields to meet the US forces with a white flag of peace in one hand and the Union Jack waving over his head in the other.

No shots were fired after Knowles informed the GIs that the German military and Nazi employees who managed the confiscated Jewish objects had fled Hungen.

The city owes it to a Scottish painter that Hungen castle avoided bombardment at the end of World War II.

In a letter to his girlfriend, Countess Johanna Solms-Laubach, Knowles wrote of a visit by the art collector Franz Moufang on 19 November 1949.

[...] His portraits, which can be seen hanging in castles, in no way resemble the style of the great travelling portraitists, but by adding to the architectural 'rhythm' they are quite suitable in the historical progression, even for distant grandchildren. "