Reader's Digest: May 27, 2023

I had forgotten most of what I knew about Jim Ede, the ill-used Tate curator who established Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, a sanctuary I loved—without originality—as an undergraduate. My then-girlfriend had the idea of working in the lucid beauty of the house-turned-museum, treating it like an off-campus office. Genius.

Kettle’s Yard is an edifice of light, an unassuming gallery with a small study space. I remember the experience of thinking there, the still silence and the quiet colour palette, but not the artwork on the walls, the backdrop to my first fumbling forays in philosophy. My favourite painting in Cambridge is Gwen John’s 1923-4 iteration of The Convalescent. As I discovered when I fact-checked Life is Hard, my memory had mislocated it in Kettle’s Yard; in fact, it’s on display at the Fitzwilliam.

Gwen John, The Convalescent, 1923-4, Fitzwilliam Museum

Still, it was a joy to return to Kettle’s Yard this week, by way of Rosemary Hill, reviewing Laura Freeman’s Ways of Life: Jim E…