The Elephant Trust has its origins in a single painting: Max Ernst’s ‘The Elephant Celebes’ (1921). For almost 50 years this one canvas has been funding artists to produce new work – a lineage which few other artworks can claim.

The work was sold in 1975 by the artist Roland Penrose to fund a trust that would support the needs of emerging artists – a mission that has remained in place to this day. Then as now, the trust was conceived as a place outside of normal funding channels and more directly responsive to the needs of producing new work. The simplicity of this goal has meant that the organisation eschews elaborate funding applications, has a board comprised only of artists and art professionals, and privileges proposals to which the trust can make a real difference. 

The painting itself is steeped in the milieu of friendship and collaboration of the artists of the early 20th century. Ernst painted ‘The Elephant Celebes’ while living in Cologne in 1921, during the time when he was one of the founders of the Cologne Dada group, and his paintings were increasingly influenced by De Chirico.

The painting depicts a short, fat elephant, rendered in dark grey. The top of his body is rounded like a dome and his trunk is an almost perfect cylindrical tube, curving towards its mouth. It’s not a particularly glamorous comparison but he bears some resemblance to the Henry hoover; it is more accurate – but still not glamorous – to say that Ernst based the strange round figure on a photograph of a three-legged grain storage bin that is believed to be from the West African Konkomba culture. His face is that of a bull, with two small white horns, which peers down at the handkerchief proffered by the trunk. It is dreamlike in that the figure doesn’t exist in reality, but the rotundity of the Elephant Celebes gives it a solidity that suggests confidence and irreverence rather than anxiety or hallucination.   

Paul Eluard, the French poet and friend of Ernst, bought the painting the year that it was first exhibited. By the late 1930s, it had travelled to England, where it entered the collection of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose. The American photographer and British artist, who were at the centre of the London art scene, collected art from their many friends – works by Picasso, Braque, Miró, Tanguy, Magritte, Man Ray and others. In the late 1930s Penrose added to this collection when he bought around one hundred works from Eluard, as the French writer was seeking to finance the publication of an unknown manuscript by Federico García Lorca. 

‘The Elephant Celebes’ next publicly surfaced in the 1970s, when it became clear to Penrose that he could use his collection as a means to support younger, newer artists. It was initially earmarked for the Institute of Contemporary Arts, which Penrose had co-founded in 1947. But the elder artist had grown disenchanted with the ICA management, and decided to use the opportunity to create a trust that would fulfil some of the original ideas of the ICA – its support of emerging artists. He sold the painting to the Tate Gallery instead and informed Ernst with one of his characteristically punning epigrams: ‘You created La femme sans tête, now it is L’Elephant dans la Tate.’ The sale furnished him with the endowment for the appropriately named Elephant Trust, and the trustees have been supporting artists with the interest from the exchange since. 

Penrose’s ambition, echoed and put into action by the trustees, is to fund work that has outstanding merit yet would not find support from the existing resources. It is hoped since his death in 1984 he would have been gratified by the work of the Elephant in supporting new and innovative projects.