CRIPPS, GANDHI, AND AN ART GALLERY NEAR LONDON’S ISLINGTON

UST OVER SEVEN years ago, I bought a book, which I put on a bookshelf without reading it, and then forgot about it. This September (2024) I found it whilst sorting through our book collection. It is a biography of the British politician Stafford Cripps (1889-1952), who visited India in March 1942. Winston Churchill had sent him there to negotiate with leading Indian Nationalists (including Gandhi, Jinnah, and Nehru) to keep them loyal to the British war effort in exchange for self-government when WW2 was over. It was up to Cripps, then a Labour politician, to formulate the proposed deal. The mission was not a success because Churchill thought that Cripps had offered the Indians too much, and the Indians thought his offer was not enough: they wanted independence immediately.

There have been many books written about Stafford Cripps. The one I found in my collection, “Stafford Cripps. A biography”, was published in 1949, when Cripps was still alive. When I looked at the book after ‘discovering’ it, what surprised me was the name of its author: Eric Estorick.

Until I looked at the book today (3rd of September 2024), I had only associated the name Estorick with a fine museum of 20th century Italian art - The Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art. This is housed within Northampton Lodge, a Georgian building which was once the home and offices of the architect Sir Basil Spence (1907-1976), who was born in Bombay. This is in Canonbury, which is just north of Islington. The collection was established by the American Eric Estorick (1913-1993) and his German-born English wife Salome (1920–1989) after WW2.

Eric Estorick was none other than the author of the biography of Cripps, which I ‘unearthed’ today. Born in Brooklyn (NY), son of Jewish emigrés from the Russian Empire, he was awarded a PhD in sociology at New York University. In 1947, he married Salome (née Dessau), who was an artist. Eric’s interest in art began before that when he met the American photographer and gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). The Estoricks began collecting art soon after the end of WW2. During their honeymoon, the Estoricks were introduced to the works of the Italian Futurists. The Collection contains several good examples of their works. In 1960, Eric opened the Grosvenor Gallery in London’s Davies Street. His first exhibition was a display of modern sculpture. It was in his gallery that my mother exhibited some of her sculptures in 1965, in an exhibition called “Fifty Years of Sculpture. Some aspects 1914-1964”. She must have been introduced to Eric at the time.

Apart from his interests in art, Eric Estorick was a prolific author. In addition to writing three books about Stafford Cripps, he wrote others about politics as well as art. One of his books, which was published privately, was a history of the Marks and Spencer firm, in which he worked for some time. It was in that company that Salome Estorick had worked. Marks and Spencer had been a customer of her father’s textile manufacturing firm.

Having found my copy of Estorick’s book and skimmed its contents, I will not be putting it into our storage unit as I had originally intended, but will begin reading it soon.