Camp de Mar photo gallery - click to view the whole gallery (18+ photos) 

Garden Lodge, Logan Place

In 1948  Tomas moved the Spanish Art Gallery to Garden Lodge, Logan Place, Kensington,London W8 where he and his wife Hilde were known to entertain their friends in high places (from MI5 and the art world). Then at some point after he  also purchased some land in Andratx, Mallorca and remodelled a house with cactus gardens, an art Studio, and farm.

Tomas owned the Garden Lodge and the El Studio at Camp de Mar and settled in Mallorca, where he devoted himself to his own art, mastering almost all techniques: oil, engraving, lithography, sculpture, stained glass and tapestries. His main inspiration was the island landscape, particularly that of Andratx, which he loved. He painted many scenes of the Mallorcan Landscape. Sadly Tomas died at 58,  in a car crash in 1964, in Mallorca.

 The Garden Lodge at Logan Place became,  many years after Tomas’s death, the home of the singer Freddy Mercury (Queen).

Ana Torrojo, a famous Spanish lead singer of the trio Mecano (which has probably been the most popular band from Spain) now owns the painters art studio.

Andreu Jaume’s family own the house in Camp De Mar in Andratx to this day. They had been friends with Tomas Harris when he lived there, and after he died, they purchased the property which Tomas had designed and built.  Andreu grew up in the house that Tomas built, and even today it is still very much like it was when Tomas lived in it. His memory lives on…

Andreu Jaume will be organising a Tomas Harris Art Exhibition this July (2010) in Palma in Mallorca – check this link for the latest exhibition news and details as they become available.

Tomas Harris was the son of my Great Grandfather Lionel Harris (Senior). See MANY photos of Tomas’s Art in my Tomas Harris Art Gallery.

Tomas Harris became a great artist. He painted, sculpted, engraved, created ceramics and stained glass art and windows, he was skilled in many techniques, and produced many fine works of art. He did not produce a lot of art during the War years, due to his work in MI5 with Garbo (see below), but it seems he made up for it in later years.  I have gathered many photographs of  Tomas Harris’s artwork which includes paintings, portraits (many self portraits), sculptures, glass work, engravings, drypoint engravings,  lithographs and lots more  and I have loaded them into my gallery of ‘Tomas Harris’s Art   on this website (click the link to view the gallery),  to which I am currently adding to EVERY day.

 I have received many images of Tomas’s  Artwork from new contacts that I found through this website, to all of whom I am extremley grateful.

Main contributers so far for my images that I have added to my Tomas Harris gallery  include :-

1. Jose Buces (second cousin to my father) – a newly discovered relative of mine who lives in Madrid
2. Andreu Jaume, an author, who is working on a biography of Tomas Harris, who’s family actually own El Studio in Mallorca, which used to be the home of Tomas Harris when he died (1964)  in a fatal car crash in Leuchmayor (Mallorca) which Hilda was thrown clear of the car and survived (click here for latest details about the accident).
3. David Moore – an new collector of Tomas’s Art, who led me on the right path to Jose and Andreu.

Jose, has also been a wonderful wealth of information and has supplied me with many photographs for my Harris Family Tree  and  Harris Family Photo Gallery. He knows so much about many members of my family tree      I have added them to my family tree. Jose has also provided me with additional new contacts which I must follow up with in the very near future.

[SinglePic not found] Last year Andreu Jaume organised an Exhibition in Andratx ‘Andratx segons Harris 2009′   – , Mallorca, with talks and discussions about Tomas’s Art, The exhibition  shows many of Tomas Harris’s works of art,  much of it supplied by Jose Buces and Andreu themselves.  The exhibition was for about 100 people, and was a success. Now there is talk of organising another one for the summer of 2010. I will post information of the exhibition when I know more…  Please subscribe to RSS (see RSS link in the header) to stay informed of new posts to this site.

My thanks go out to Jose and Andreu and David Moore for the all their  images, and heaps of  information that has flowed into my inbox in during the last couple of weeks, and they say ‘There is more to come’..   THANK Q….

A bit of background about Tomas Harris

It was in the late 1920s that Lionel’s youngest son, Tomás, decided to follow his father into art dealing. Tomas Harris had already owned  two art galleries of his own in London before joining his father Lionel who owned and directed the Spanish Art Gallery, in London.  Tomás won a scholarship at the Slade School of Art when he was only fifteen and was trained as an artist there from 1923 to 1926, spending a year subsequently at the British Academy in Rome. Although he had a prodigious talent and continued to paint and exhibit his work throughout his life, the family’s dealing in works of art stimulated his interest in collecting too. He began by seeking out prints and drawings by the two Tiepolos, Dürer and Rembrandt, and then turned his attention to Goya., building up an unrivalled collection of the various editions of the Spanish artist’s major series of prints and lithographs, and studying rare states of the etchings. In his will, Lionel made it plain that Tomás was uniquely suited to run the London gallery, and the exceptional quality of the two exhibitions he organised in the 1930s, with major works by Velázquez, Ribera, Zurbarán and Goya and little known works from private collections, showed that he had the ability to develop the business further.  Although Tomás and Maurice were actively trying to sell work from their father’s stock to major museums in the post-war period, it has been said that Tomás was ‘evidently trying to wind up his business’ then. And it may be that the stimulus to create, fostered by his house in Majorca, and his Goya collecting and the preparation of his Goya print catalogue left little time for dealing and selling.

NOTE : Tomás Harris’s Goya print collection, part of it now available for study in the British Museum’s Department of Prints and Drawings thanks to the generosity of his widow and his sisters,and his two volume Goya Prints and Lithographs(Oxford, Bruno Cassirer, 1964) have made a major contribution to the understanding of Goya’s etching and lithographic techniques, and have greatly increased the general appreciation of that part of the Spanish artist’s work.  Art Historians are hard pressed to weigh the significance of his work as artist, collector and scholar, against the importance of his work for MI 5 during World War II (see other posts on this website) , since he was the individual responsible for much of the planning and control of the Double Agent known as Garbo, and invented himself many of the spurious reports sent to this agent (and thence to the German High Command) from Garbo’s imaginary network of spies, creating an ingenious web of deceptions, that succeeded in keeping the Germans in the dark about the intended D-Day landings. Tomás wrote his own account of his role as Garbo’s full-time case officer in a series of World War II double bluffs, now in the National Archives at Kew, available in print with the title Garbo, the spy who saved D-day(London, Public Record Office, 2000).  ** Another book written by Nigel West and Garbo – simply called Garbo, is also a great read.. It reads  like a fictional story about espionage in World War II, but its far from fictio – its a true story and of couse is about Tomas Harris in MI5 almost as much as  it is about Garbo himself.

MR TOMAS HARRIS - SPANISH ART

In 1964, Sir Anthony Blunt wrote :-

Mr. Tomas Harris, who was killed in a road accident in Majorca on Monday(27th January 1964), was well known to evryone in the art world in London and Madrid. His father Lionel Harris, founded the Spanish Art Galleries more than half a century ago and although Tomas himself wanted to become a painter,  and won a scholarship to the Slade at the age of 16, he abandoned this career in order to join the firm and help his father.

Almost every important work of art to come from Spain to England during the half-century went through the hands of either the father or the son and one could be certain at any time of seeing in the galleries, masterpieces by El Greco or the other great Spanish painters, as well as carpets and other objects of art of the particlualr kinds in which Spain was so rich. Tomas had an uncanny instinct for discovering works of art in unexpected places, and one of his most important acquisitions a series of fifteenth-century  German panels which had once been in the National Gallery – were bought among the contents of an outhouse at a country sale. To his energy and acumen were added the most rigid integrity in all matters of business and the greatest generosity in questions of scholarship: his pictures and his great knowledge were available to the humblest student as well as to the expert or potential buyer.

During the war he ws attached to the War office (in MI5) where his special qualifications and his astonishing imagination enabled him to do work of the highest value to the Allied cause, which won him great commendation from those in high places who were in a position to judge it.

After the war instead of returning to the art trade he devoted himself to painting and held successful exhibitions in London, New York, Madrid and Barcelona. For his last 10 years he lived mainly in Majorca and devoted much time to the scholarship of art history. He lived long enough to witness the triumpant success of the exhibition of etchings by Goya which he organized at the British Museum, almost entirely from the resources of his own collection and to see the first rough copy of his complete catalogue of these etchings which is due to be published in the near future and which will revolutionize our idea of Goya’s acheivment as an engraver.

TOMAS HARRIS (1908 – 1964)

1908 – Tomas Born to my great Grand Parents Lionel and Enriqueta (Rodriquez) Harris

1923 – at 15 years old, Tomas won the Trevelyan-Goodall scholarship to the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art at the London University. Then went on to Rome to study painting and sculpture at the British Academy there. Then back in London he owned his own tiny gallery.

1930 – First Tomas owned his own tiny gallery. Lionel Harris, Tomas’s father was the director and owner of the splendid Spanish Art Gallery in Mayfair (and another in Madrid),  founded in the turn of the century to show the finest Spanish, Italian and Flemish classical art. Tomas joined his father just before his retirement and did very well.  Tomas worked with ceramics, stained glass, tapestry, and engraving. Tomas inherited his fathers home, 6 chesterfield Gardens, which became a meeting place for MI5’s and SIS’s (MI6) few Bohemian employees. Tomas Harris  had an impressive art Collection by Velazquez, Goya and Rubens. After his fathers retirement as director,  Tomas was soon recognised as one of the most clever and respected art dealers, known worldwide for his exquisite taste and his infallible eye.

1931 – Tomas Harris and Hilda Webb were married, between July and September, a document shows they were married in 1931, in Marylebone, London, and their marriage certificate reference number is Vol 1 a/ 1648..

1940 – Tomas was posted to the SOE’s (Sabotage Organization created in July following the fall of France to the Germans) first Special Training School, which had been established at Brickendonbury Hall, in a large country house in Hertford. Tomas and his wife Hilde, stayed there for 6 months and he was then ‘snapped up by MI5’ where he was to conceive and guide one of the most creative intelligence operations of all time – it became known as ‘The Garbo Case’.

1941-Late in 1941 – Head of B1(g) Brooman-White was transferred to SIS (MI6) to run Section V’s unit known as V(d). Tomas Harris was appointed to succeed him. Expansion had taken place and workload was escalating daily. Three secretaries were not enough. Sarah Bishop (fluent in Spanish) who worked in MI5’s French section, was recruited by Tomas and after a brief spell of learning about the role of the security service, Sarah joined Tomas in B1(g).

It was at this time that the pieces of the jigsaw were put together. It now seemed likely to MI5 that the man who had visited the British embassy in Madrid and later in Lisbon to offer his services to the Allied cause, was the same man the Germans had code named ARABEL (later to be known as GARBO) . It was obvious to MI5 that ARABEL’s information provided to the Germans was fictitious, as his letters written in invisible ink to the Germans contained many errors – such as litres of wine and beer, moving south because of the hot summers in London!, errors in accounts (pre-decimal) always submitted in shillings instead of £ S . – but not so obvious to the Germans. ARABEL also came uncomfortably close to the truth in many ways too. So the question for MI5 was – ‘Is he genuine or a plant by the Germans, should we leave him well alone?’ After many debates and deliberations between MI5 and SIS, it was eventually agreed that the benefits of taking him on outweighed the risks.

1942/Jan – Britain agree to represent the Juan Pujol.

THE WAR YEARS -  Tomas and Garbo worked together during the war. Books have been written by both about their war efforts.. I have written more/other notes on Garbo and Tomas in the Garbo Post.  Please click this link to jump directly to 1942 in the Garbo Post

1944/September – Tommy and Garbo invented an excuse to avoid having Garbo give co-ordinates of the ‘landings’ of the V2’s, The first V2 bomb, which landed in Chiswick on the 8th September 1944 killing 3 people. As Garbo was expected by the Germans to give co-ordinates of the bomb sites, Garbo ‘got himself arrested by the police’ while supposedly going to the bomb site to determine the co-ordinates. Because of this, the Germans directed Garbo to suspend all operations until instructed otherwise. This was exactly what Garbo and Tomas had hoped for. They both took vacations, the first that either had taken since they started working together over two years before. Tommy and Hilde went to stay at Sarah Bishops parents at Chisbury in Wiltshire, where Tomas picked up his paintbrush and painted farm animals, and Garbo went on a motor tour of the British Isles.

During the 2nd World War Years – Tommy and his wife were lavish entertainers and during the war and moved from Chesterfield Gardens to a larger property, Garden House in Logan Place. He hardly did any painting during the war years.. Garbo described Tommy in his book as “sensible, capable, always impeccably dressed , smoked like a chimney, adored his wife, always cheerful, had an attractive smile, enjoyed good food and wine, had an impressive art collection by Velazquez, Goya and Rubens. He said in Tommy’s early days he was influenced by El Greco school, but later by Goya.

1944/June – When the V2’s fell, Tommy left Chesterfield Gardens and took temporary refuge at the Bull, at Gerrards Cross, NW London.

>1945 : Tomas received an O.B.E for his war efforts as offcer in MI5, for his imagination and work with Garbo.  After years of frenzied activity in MI5,  Harris sold his gallery and designed and built a house and art studio in Camp de Mar, in Andratx, in Mallorca, and settled there, where he devoted himself to his own art, mastering almost all techniques: oil, engraving, lithography, sculpture, stained glass and tapestries. His main inspiration was the island landscape, particularly that of Andratx, which he loved.

1964 – Tomas died (and there was an inquest) in Mallorca, crashed his new car .  His wife Hilde was also in the car and was thrown clear and survived. ( Tomas and Hilde were on their way from Camp de Mar to purchase plane tickents to fly to Madrid the following week, they had had lunch in Palma with Robert Graves (a famous English Author)  and then drove on towards Felanitx (a little town in Mallorca) to see a man who was going to bake more of  Tomas’s ceramics in his kiln. On their way there, in Leuchmayor,  their new  Citroen DS (5,000 miles on the clock) crashed, it was a fatal car accident. Hilda was thrown clear of the car and survived, but Tomas Harris died (1964).  An inquest was held – see Anthony Blunts newspaper article about this ) Hilda died about four years later. My Grandfather (William Harris, Tomas’s Brother) was specifically named in Tomas’s will, which also mentions Enriqueta (Tomas’s sister) along with his wife’s three sisters. And when Enriqueta’s Obituary was published in the Sunday Times one day in 2006, my father recognised the name and immediately checked it against the copy of Tomas’s Will that he had a copy of. My father then realised that he had made an amazing connection with his own fathers rather large family of MI5 employees, art dealers, artists and antique dealers with whom he had no contact at all since he was a young boy.

2009 Aug –  Andratx segon Harris - Art Exhibition held in August 2009,  in Andratx, Mallorca, the organizer of the exhibition was *Andreu Jaume of Lumen Publishing in Barcelona, He knows an incredible amount about Tomas Harris, and perhaps a book is on the cards. Andreu Jaume owns the house of Tomas Harris. in Andratx, Camp de Mar,  and a famous singer Ana Torrojo (lead singer of the trio Mecano, which has probably been the most popular band from Spain) now owns the painters art studio.

*  If anyone has contact details for Andreu Jaume please let me know – I would love to get in touch with him.. — LATEST NEWS : Andreu has made contact with me through this website – the wonders of the internet!!

* I have been contacted by David Moore through this website who has several paintings by Tomas Harris, and went to the ‘Adnratx segon Harris’ exhibition in Mallorca this year,  gave me the names of two organisers and informed me that Andreu Jaume now ownes the house Tomas owned. Also that during the exhibition a nephew of Tomas (from his wife’s side) gave a very moving tribute to Tomas Harris. I would very much appreciate being notified if anyone knows how I can possibly contact any members of the Hild’s family (sisters – Ella Powell, Madge Tribe, Ivy Web)

—————— LINKS —————–

(D-Day 6/6/1944) - (view Link)

This date marks the start of Europe invasion in Normandy, France – during World War II

MI5 (view Link)

was responsible for counter-espionage intelligence within the UK

MI6/SIS (view Link)

Secret Intelligence service for counter-espionage intelligence in foreign countries.

Garbo (view Post)

Spanish Agent, a double Agent for Britain MI5, was awarded the Iron Cross by the Germans

Anthony Blunt (view Post)

MI5 Agent,  was An Art historian before and after the war, he was knighted then when suspected of being a Soviet spy Agent his knighthood was annulled.