James Pitcairn-Knowles
Dutch painter and sculptor (1863–1954)
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. Because he went to school in Wiesbaden, exhibited his pictures in the spa town and had the Schloss Freudenberg built on the edge of it, he is counted among the Wiesbaden painters.
Early life
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. 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 Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles, were born in Rotterdam, where the family was registered with the British Embassy. The business in Rotterdam was so successful for William that in 1873, at the age of fifty-two, he retired from business and moved to the spa town of Wiesbaden where he was able to concentrate on his passion, his art collection, primarily Old Masters.
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. But this attempt to introduce Knowles into the wool trade failed. He returned to Wiesbaden in 1882 and was able to persuade his father to finance him to study art instead.
Education
From 1883 Knowles studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Carl Theodor von Piloty and Fritz von Uhde.
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