Ruth Doniach-Durant, Vivien Pilley’s niece
Photographer: Rob Greig
Ruth, the daughter of Vivien’s twin sister Théa Ursula, kindly gave us this personal account of her uncle in an informal interview, July 2025.
“He was generous, funny but had a notoriously short fuse. He had a huge blue Studebaker and he smoked a pipe while driving and shouted ‘bloody fool!’ at anyone who he deemed to be driving badly. On summer days he’d say ‘Let’s go to the country’. There’d be a lot of driving and pointing out of ‘terrible’ architecture on the way. The country for him was a ‘farm tea’ – usually boiled eggs and toast. That was a country tea. No walking or admiring the view! Yet he spent his formative years in rural France.
Leopold and Lena, his parents, were both painters but had completely different styles. Lena painted mainly landscapes, was a modernist painter and member of the Seven and Five Society. Both lived in Lodz in Poland, where her family owned properties. They were very successful, committed artists and well-connected. They had exhibitions in Warsaw and Leopold exhibited in Paris, Munich, Berlin and London amongst others. They moved to Paris because it was Europe’s artistic centre, then came to England in 1913. They had Maïa in 1905, who sadly died of breast cancer aged 33. She was married to Hugh Gainsborough, a medical consultant known as ‘The Red Professor’ for his membership of the Communist Party. He was chief physician at St George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner and was responsible for its move to its current location in Tooting.
After Maïa they unexpectedly produced twins (Amnon Vivien and my mother Théa Ursula) which put a strain on their work as artists. It was the fashion to send babies ‘en nourrice’ (to be cared for/wet-nursed) until weaned, in the countryside. So Vivien and Théa were sent to live with two sisters who were wet nurses, I think near Alençon, in rural Normandy. One was a bit of a drinker and we think she might have dropped Vivien on his head. He was trepanned in later life as he had developed a brain tumour. They lived there from three weeks old to three years. The home was a hovel, very basic and shared with their domestic animals. The idea of ‘en nourrice’ was that children would benefit from fresh air and good farm food and be away from the city.
During this time, Maia stayed at home and was indulged. Then Lena and Leopold had another little boy (Ari Thaddeus, known as Thadé and later Teddy Pilley). So the twins came back to a sister and brother they didn’t really know. They were made to eat under the table because they were told they had ‘peasant’ manners and spoke in Normandy patois. They had terrible chilblains. My mother was later treated as a sort of skivvy and was burdened with most of the housework. She didn’t have a great relationship with her sister but was always very close to her brothers Vivien and Thadé, who were also good friends with each other. The boys loved playing tricks on each other and on others. I remember them peeing from the top of the steps at 7 Hill Road on visitors and passers-by and they would dress up at family parties and make us all collapse with laughter.
From Paris, Lena and Leopold came to England in 1913, just before the First World War. They bought 7 Hill Road in St John’s Wood, a four storey (basement plus three storeys) house. The self-contained studio at the end of the garden was the main attraction.
All the family lived there. It was a Francophile household. The children and parents spoke to each other in French. The ‘pas devant les enfants’ language the parents spoke (so the children couldn’t understand) was Polish. A niece with TB of the spine came to stay too. At some point she was homesick and was sent back to Warsaw. My mother always said ‘Poor Micia – she perished’ and I didn’t really understand the meaning of that that until much later.
My family lived in Langford Place at number 14. Dame Laura Knight was at number 16 and was a good friend of the family and John Betjeman wrote a poem ‘The Witch’s House’ about the property next door. Vivien and his wife Frances and daughter Sandra lived five minutes’ walk away in 7 Hill Road and there were other members of the family in the area. We used to do what we called ‘the rounds’, visiting each of five households in turn in the afternoon.
I remember visiting ‘Mamima’ (Lena), whose speciality was painting velvet scarves. I can still smell the special inks she used. Leopold was the painter of the era when it came to portraits of influential Jewish subjects – all those involved in the 1917 Balfour Declaration and leaders in the Jewish world. He wasn’t conventionally religious but my mother clearly remembers the family hosting the main Jewish festivals. My parents (Théa and Nakdimon Doniach) got married in the St John’s Wood Synagogue, where the family were members. He was the first Chair of the Ben Uri Society, a specialist art society for Jewish painters.
I was four when Lena died in 1947. After that, Vivien took over the studio and converted the basement flat. On the left was the main bedroom, and by the bed there was a hatch so he could pass Frances’ cup of tea to her in the morning!
I was close to Vivien and Frances and my cousin, their daughter Sandra, who was just six months younger. I saw her nearly every day. When Sandra was eleven they had a terrible car crash in France. All of them were quite badly injured. Frances suffered quite a serious mental breakdown after this.
I loved going to the flat. Vivien, Frances and Sandra were the last on ‘the round’. Frances used to make oven pancakes and waffles and sometimes chicken soup with lots of herbs in it.
When I visited Sandra, ‘Uncle Viv’ would be standing working at his drawing board, as architects did in those days. He had people working for him … two or three including secretaries.
My uncle was the main influence upon the design of every house we lived in. In 1966 when I was doing post-grad teacher training, I rented a little flat above a tobacconists in West Hampstead, opposite the Overground. Vivien had been to the flat and seen the beige 30s fireplace tiles. He evidently felt I shouldn’t have to live with them. One day, I came home and found the fireplace completely disguised with a sheet of hardboard and a mahogany shelf above it. I asked how he got in and he said he climbed up the drainpipe. Extraordinary really, but at the time I just thought ‘well, that’s typical Uncle Vivien’!
Vivien was a communist – the only other politically active family member apart from his brother-in-law Hugh Gainsborough.
He loved English and French poetry and, like my mother, could recite it at astounding length. One poem, ‘Colloque Sentimentale’ by Verlaine was a particular favourite.
I don’t think he ever drank. He did a lot of mild swearing. He was kicked out of the RIBA for a period of time and we aren’t exactly sure why, but was subsequently re-instated. There was a mismatch between his incredible sophistication and his gullibility. He was naturally sensitive to the zeitgeist … totally into the newest, most fashionable thing. But also naïve. And he had a totally binary approach to aesthetics. There was no middle ground. Design was good or it was terrible. That was that.
In his final few months he went into the Tottenham Jewish Hospital. I made cakes for him every fortnight, posting them to him. I used to visit and read him French poetry, which he loved.
Vivien was warm, generous, impulsive. He had a photographic memory for learning poetry, was well read, innocent and charming in his dealings with people throughout his life, sometimes to his detriment. Like my mother he was never cynical. The thing I remember him being most angry about was someone asking him to design a mock Tudor bar!”