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Fig. 270 Marie-Louise von Motesiczky, photograph, 1947, sent to Elias Canetti in a letter dated 14 August 1947 (Motesiczky archive)
1940 Escapes the dangers of the Blitz with her mother and Marie Hauptmann by moving to Amersham in Buckinghamshire, a village to the west of London. They first live with the priest Gordon Milburn and his wife Mary at ‘Durris’ in Stubbs Wood, where Canetti and his wife live later on. After the war, Motesiczky paints the portrait Father Milburn, 1958 (no. 154), and Canetti describes the couple in his English memoirs Party in the Blitz (2005). Kokoschka paints a portrait of Motesiczky. 1941 The Motesiczkys acquire ‘Cornerways’, a threebedroom house at 86 Chestnut Lane, Amersham. The house affords space for a studio and for Canetti’s substantial library. Motesiczky participates in the ‘Exhibition of Contemporary Continental Art. Paintings, Water-Colours, Sculptures’ at the Leger Gallery in London. She helps Max Beckmann to survive in exile during the war by mediating sales of his works to her relatives in the Netherlands. 1942 Participates in the ‘Exhibition of Works by Allied Artists’ at the R.B.A. Galleries in London. Canetti dedicates to her a manuscript, Aufzeichnungen für Marie-Louise, published in 2005. Her brother is arrested by the Gestapo on 13 October after helping two Jewish couples from Poland escape to Switzerland. He is deported to Auschwitz. 1943 Joins the Artists’ International Association. Karl von Motesiczky dies in the prisoners’ infirmary at Auschwitz on 25 June. 1944 Shows twenty-eight paintings at the ‘Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture by Marie Louise Motesicky and Mary Duras’ at the Czechoslovak Institute, London. She shows a painting in ‘AIA 1944. Artists’ International Association Members’ Exhibition’ at the R.B.A. Galleries.
1945 After the war Motesiczky moves from Amersham to London, staying at 139 Maida Vale. She takes part in ‘This Extraordinary Year. Annual Exhibition by members of the Artists’ International Association’ at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. 1946 First trip to Vienna after the war. She returns regularly. 1948 She and her mother are ‘naturalized’ as British citizens. She moves to a flat at 14 Compayne Gardens, West Hampstead. Canetti has a room here from 1951 to 1957, where he often works. 1950 Around this time she forms lasting friendships with the art critic and writer Edith Yapou, the leading modernist architect Godfrey Samuel and the émigré artist Milein Cosman and her husband, the musicologist Hans Keller. 1952 Has solo exhibitions at the Kunstzaal Van Lier, Amsterdam, and the Kunstzaal Plaats, The Hague. The Stedelijk Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam, buys Finchley Road at Night (no. 110), painted that year. 1953 Participates in the exhibition ‘The Renaissance of the Fish. Paintings from the 17th to the 20th Century’ at Roland, Browse and Delbanco, Cork Street, London. 1954 Her nurse, Marie Hauptmann, who has been a second mother to her since her childhood, dies in March, aged sixty-nine. The Städtische Galerie in Munich mounts an exhibition of works by Erna Dinklage and Motesiczky featuring thirty-four of her works, chiefly recent paintings. Friendship with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and his wife Ursula, whose portrait she paints. 1955 Together with Heinz May, Curt Beckmann and Hans van Breek, Motesiczky exhibits at the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen in Düsseldorf.
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Fig. 271 Milein Cosman and Marie-Louise von Motesiczky on the steps of the Tate Gallery in London, photograph, 1953 (Motesiczky archive)
Fig. 272 Marie-Louise von Motesiczky with Franzi – in the background a tapestry with a hunting scene from the family property in Vienna, photograph, c. 1955 (Motesiczky archive)