Eulogy 24 - A Salute to Les Kimpton

 EULOGY 24 - A Salute to Les Kimpton

His Gift never stops Giving!

Leslie Andrew (Les) Kimpton[1] was the youngest of 5 children. That simple fact is very important to this Salute to Les!

There was 18 years difference between his eldest sibling, Mabel[2], and himself. The time gap does suggest that Les may have either been a mistake or a very unexpected outcome.

But being the youngest, Les had the distinction of being the last to die. He was the “last custodian” of the family memories, the family home, and the family possessions.

This as such is not unusual, except that 3 of the Kimpton siblings had never left the family home[3] – in Les’s case, he had lived in the same house for over 70 years – unmarried, and when his 2 brothers died, alone there for 19 years.

Les was only basically educated and factory skilled. He had started in a local hosiery factory in his 20s and stayed there until he retired 45 years later.

His friends were those at the factory. They were largely kind to him and attempted to include him in their family lives, or at least to “pop over” to his place with a casserole or a couple of bottles for a chat on the weekends.

Les was not so much reclusive but rather quiet and undemanding. As the youngest, he was given the bungalow bedroom at the rear of the house. He liked it there so much that when he was the last surviving sibling, he stayed on in the bungalow as if the other bedrooms were still in demand.

Les Kimpton was a nice bloke.

Les’s older brother, Ted[4], was also a quiet, unassuming bloke. But Ted had a special talent – he could paint. He could paint very well!

And his lifelong absorption in his art was to try and master the light & shade techniques of Rembrandt. He never quite got there but his skills and his paintings did get noticed.

Ted was able to maintain a “careful living” as an artist, selling in the Fitzroy galleries. He was not an entrepreneur or a self-promoter. He just wanted to improve his techniques, his skills in the style of the Great Master.

In the last 10 years of Ted’s life, the National Galleries “found” him, and they acquired some of his works, and he even had a “big time showing”. But not much of the proceeds of the sales seemed to trickle down to Ted.

When Ted died, his bedroom was stacked with finished and unfinished works. Ted hadn’t known what to do so he bequeathed them to his surviving brothers, Les & Alf[5].

Alf died 2 years later, and so Les for a while just closed Ted’s bedroom door.

Then one day in 1969, Les thought that Ted’s paintings might be nice gifts to thank some of the factory friends he had. Well, “light ‘n shade” still-lifes and landscapes are not everyone’s “cup of tea”, so it was getting a bit hard until Les thought – “What about their kids as they got married?”

That’s where we come into the story as one day in 1969, Les invited us[6] down to his house to take “2 or 3 of Ted’s paintings” as a Wedding gift.

Neither Karen nor I had come from families that collected paintings but somehow, we realized the beauty of Ted’s work. Somehow, we “got the light ‘n shade bit”. Somehow. we were at the right age to have our minds opened by a talent never before encountered, let alone imagined.

Les gave us 3 paintings that day. They are as precious today to us as they were overwhelmingly generous of him. They rest on our bedroom wall – and they inspired a lifetime of gallery visiting, interaction with visual artists, reading art books, absorbing and collecting what we could afford.

Ted’s skills – Les’ Gifts just keep on giving!

We hope to continue repeating his generosity for the generations following us.[7]

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[1] Leslie Andrew (Les) Kimpton (1904-1984)

[2] Mabel Kimpton (Briggs) (1886-1959)

[3] At 22 Irvine Crescent West Brunswick, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

[4] Edward John (Ted) Kimpton (1888-1965)

[5] Alfred William (Alf) Kimpton (1900-1967)

[6] Warren Maloney (1948-) & Karen Saundry (Maloney) (1950-)

[7] Written by Warren Maloney 3 October 2024