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| 1927 Dame Laura Knight bromide print 19 x 24.3 cm Creative Commons Licence © National Portrait Gallery, London |
Dame Laura Knight nee Laura Johnson (4 August 1877 – 7 July 1970) was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition and who embraced English Impressionism. In her long career, Knight was among the most successful and popular painters in Britain. Her success in the male-dominated British art establishment paved the way for greater status and recognition for women artists.
In 1929 she was created a Dame, and in 1936 became the first woman elected to full membership of the Royal Academy. Her large retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1965 was the first for a woman. Knight was known for painting amidst the world of the theatre and ballet in London, and for being a war artist during the Second World War. She was also greatly interested in, and inspired by, marginalised communities and individuals, including Gypsies and circus performers.
Laura Johnson was born in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, the youngest of the three daughters of Charles and Charlotte Johnson. Her father abandoned the family not long after her birth, and Knight grew up amid financial problems. Her grandfather owned a lace-making factory but the advent of new technology led to the business going bankrupt.
Charlotte Johnson taught part-time at the Nottingham School of Art, and managed to have Laura enrolled as an 'artisan student' there, paying no fees, aged just 13. At the age of fifteen, and still a student herself, Knight took over her mother's teaching duties when Charlotte was diagnosed with cancer and became seriously ill. Later she won a scholarship and the gold medal in the national student competition held by the then South Kensington Museum. At the School of Art, Laura met one of the most promising students, Harold Knight, then aged 17, and determined that the best method of learning was to copy Harold's technique. They became friends, and married in 1903.
(I will be posting a follow-up series on Harold Knight, after the Laura Knight series)
In 1894 the couple visited Staithes, a fishing village on the Yorkshire coast, for a holiday and soon returned to live and work there. In Staithes Laura drew the people of the fishing village and the surrounding farms, showing the hardship and poverty of their lives. She made studies, paintings and watercolours, often painting in muted, shadowy tones. Lack of money for expensive materials meant she produced few oil paintings at this time. Local children would sit for her, for pennies, giving her the opportunity to develop her figure painting technique. Less successful at this time were her landscape and thematic works. Although she painted on the moors, high inland from Staithes, she did not consider herself successful at resolving these studies into finished pieces.
In late 1907 the Knights moved to Cornwall, staying first in Newlyn, before moving to the nearby village of Lamorna. There, alongside Lamorna Birch and Alfred Munnings, they became central figures in the artists colony known as the Newlyn School. By March 1908 both had work exhibited at the Newlyn Art Galley and Harold Knight was an established professional portrait painter, while Laura was still developing her art. Around Newlyn the Knights found themselves among a group of sociable and energetic artists, which appears to have allowed the more vivid and dynamic aspects of Laura's personality to come to the fore.
Laura spent the summer of 1908 working on the beaches at Newlyn making studies for her large painting of children in bright sunlight. “The Beach” was shown at the Royal Academy in 1909, and was considered a great success, showing Laura painting in a more Impressionist style than she had displayed previously.
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| 1909 The Beach oil on canvas 127.6 x 153.2 cm Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK |
Another work from this time is “The Green Feather” which Knight painted and reworked due to a change in the weather, outdoors in a single day and shows the model Dolly Snell in an emerald evening dress with a hat and a large feather. Knight sent the painting to an international exhibition held at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and it was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada for £400.
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| 1911 The Green Feather oil on canvas 213.3 x 160 cm National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa |
Laura started the vast painting “Lamorna Birch and his Daughters” in 1913, painting in a wood in the Lamorna Valley but then kept the painting unfinished in her studio until finally completing it in 1934, the same year Birch was elected a full member of the Royal Academy.
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| 1934 Lamorna Birch and His Daughters oil on canvas 215 x 261 cm The University of Nottingham, UK |
In 1913 Knight made a painting that was a first for a woman artist, “Self Portrait with Nude,” showing herself painting a nude model, the artist Ella Naper. Using mirrors, Knight painted herself and Naper as seen by someone entering the studio behind them both. As an art student Knight had not been permitted to directly paint nude models but, like all female art students in England at the time, was restricted to working from casts and copying existing drawings. Knight deeply resented this, and “Self Portrait with Nude” is a clear challenge, and reaction, to those rules. The painting was first shown in 1913 at the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery in Newlyn, and was well received by both the local press and other artists. Although the Royal Academy rejected the painting for exhibition, it was shown at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in London as “The Model.” The Daily Telegraph’s critic called the painting "vulgar", and suggested that it "might quite appropriately have stayed in the artist's studio".Despite this reaction, Knight continued to exhibit the painting throughout her career, and it continued to receive press criticism. After Knight's death the picture, now known simply as “Self Portrait” was purchased by the National Portrait Gallery, and is now considered both a key work in the story of female self-portraiture and as symbolic of wider female emancipation.
Knight worked with Ella Naper, who was experienced in enamelling techniques, to produce a set of small enamel pieces featuring several ballet dancers, which were shown at the Fine Art Society in London in 1915. Censorship during the First World War included restrictions on sketching and painting around the British coastline, which caused problems for Knight, particularly when painting “Spring,” but special painting and sketching permits available after 1915 allowed her to continue her paintings of cliff-top landscapes. "Spring" was shown at the Royal Academy in 1916 but later reworked.
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| 1916-20 Spring oil on canvas 152.4 x 182.9 cm Tate, London |
Several others were completed from studies in the Knights' first London studio after they moved to the capital in 1919. Also in 1916 Knight received a £300 commission to paint a canvas for the Canadian Government War Records office on the theme of Physical Training in a Camp, and produced a series of paintings of boxing matches at Witley I Surrey. During the war, in 1916, Harold Knight had registered as a conscientious objector and was eventually required to work as a farm labourer.
Between 1911 until 1929, Knight drew and painted backstage, some of the most famous ballet dancers of the day from Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. Her subjects included Lydia Lopokova. Anna Pavlova and the dance teacher Enrico Cecchetti. Knight also painted backstage, and in the dressing rooms, at several Birmingham Repertory Theatre productions. In 1924 she was commissioned to design the costumes for the ballet Les Roses.
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| 1919-22c Les Sylphides oil on canvas 76.2 x 101.6 cm Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, UK |
In the early 1920s Knight bought Sir George Clausen’s Sir George Clausen’s printing press and began etching. She produced 90 prints between 1923 and 1925, including a poster advertising tram travel to Twickenham forLondon Transport. Knight continued to produce posters for London Transport throughout her career, including one on circus clowns in 1932 and “Winter Walks” in 1957. In 1922 Knight made her first trip to America, where she served on the jury at the Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Pictures.
In 1961 Harold Knight died at Colwall; the couple had been married fifty-eight years. Knight's second autobiography “The Magic of a Line” was published in 1965, to coincide with a major retrospective of her work at the Royal Academy. The exhibition, the first such for a woman at the Academy, contained over 250 works, and was followed in 1968 and 1969 by further retrospective exhibitions at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries. Laura Knight died on 7 July 1970, aged 92, three days before a large exhibition of her work opened at the Nottingham Castle Art Gallery and Museum.
This is part 1 of an 8-part series on the works of Dame Laura Knight:
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| 1891 The Yellow Lady, Lily Poyser oil on canvas 76.2 x 60.9 cm Private Collection |
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| 1892 Portrait of the Artist's Father oil on canvas 36 x 26 cm Private Collection |
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| 1895 Study for portrait of Lily Poyser monochrome wash 44 x 12.6 cm |
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| 1895 Young Woman Wearing Black with Hat watercolour and oil 83.8 x 66 cm |
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| 1896 Eva Johnson, "Sis" oil on canvas 55.8 x 45.7 Private Collection |
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| c1896 Girl in a White Dress oil on canvas 61 x 50.8 cm Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, UK |
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| 1897-98 On the Quayside, Staithes (signed Laura Johnson) watercolour 15.9 x 18.4 cm Private Collection |
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| 1898c Packing Fish on the Quay at Staithes (signed Laura Johnson) oil on canvas 60.9 x 50.8 cm Private Collection |
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| 1900 Staithes, Yorkshire oil on canvas |
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| 1900 The Last Coble (note: a type of traditional fishing boat) oil on canvas 92.8 x 127.6 cm Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, UK |
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| c1900 Cobles at Runswick(signed Laura Johnson) oil on board 39.4 x 29.2 cm Private Collection |
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| c1900 The Fishing Fleet oil on canvas 123 x 84 cm Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, UK |
c1901 Idylls of the King
A sequence of six paintings, together forming a room frieze, on the theme of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem:
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| c1901 Idylls of the King oil on canvas 76 x 437 cm Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery |
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| c1901 Idylls of the King oil on canvas 76 x 437 cm Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, UK |
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| c1901 Idylls of the King (Balin and Balan) oil on canvas 76 x 198 cm Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, UK |
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| c1901 Idylls of the King oil on canvas 76 x 112 cm Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery |
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| c1901 Tree, Idylls of the King oil on canvas 76 x 46 cm Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, UK |
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| c1901 Tree, Idylls of the King oil on canvas 76 x 46 cm Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery, UK * * * * * |
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| 1903-07 Plucking the Goose watercolour on paper 26 x 32.4 cm Castle Museum, Nottingham, UK |
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| c1906-07 The Rocking Chair watercolour and gouache 23 x 18 cm |
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| 1906-10 Flying a Kite oil on canvas 149.8 x 180 cm Iziko Museums of Cape Town, South Africa |
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| c1906 Dressing the Children oil on canvas 102.2 x 139.7 cm Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston Upon Hull, UK |
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| 1907c Girl and Kitten oil on canvas 31.7 x 23.5 cm Private Collection |
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| c1907 The Elder Sister oil on canvas 32.5 x 25 cm Touchstones Rochdale, UK |
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| 1908-09 In the Spring Time oil on canvas 132.3 x 158.2 cm Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK |
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| c1908-18 A Dark Pool oil on canvas 46 x 45.8 cm Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK |
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| c1909 In the Sun, Newlyn oil on canvas 63.5 x 96.5 cm |
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| c1910-12 Motley oil on canvas 62.2 x 75.6 cm National Museum Wales, Cardiff, UK |
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| c1910 Children in the Garden, The Penton Children watercolour 59 x 47.6 cm |
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| 1913 Wind and Sun watercolour and bodycolour over pencil on linen 96.5 x 112 cm |
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| 1912 In The Fields watercolour and gouache over pencil 53.3 x 75.9 cm Private Collection |
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| 1912 The Picnic oil on canvas 145 x 120 cm |
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| 1912 Untrodden Sands (medium not found) 76.2 x 73.6 cm Private Collection |
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| c1912 Bathing oil on canvas 61 x 61 cm |
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| c1912 The Bathing Pool oil on canvas 76.2 x 63.5 cm Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand |
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| c1912 Two Dancers oil on enamel 45 x 45 cm Penlee House Gallery & Museum, Penzance, UK |
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| 1913 Wind and Sun watercolour and bodycolour over pencil on linen 96.5 x 112 cm |
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| c1913 Self-Portrait oil on canvas 59.5 x 59.5 cm National Gallery of Australia, Canberra |
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| 1914 Marsh Mallows oil on canvas 76.8 x 64.1 cm Private Collection |
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| before 1915 The China Clay Pit pencil and watercolour 45.7 x 68.5 cm Penlee House Museum, Penzance, UK |
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| 1915 Lady in a Blue Dress oil on canvas 35.6 x 25.4 cm |
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| 1915 The Two Fishers pencil, watercolour and gouache 55.8 x 76.2 cm |
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| c1915-16 Le Carnival oil on canvas 76.2 x 101.6 cm |
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| c1915 Sennen Cove, Cornwall (details not found) |
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| c1916 Study of a Model Relaxing in a Tree pencil on wove paper 28.5 x 19.8 cm Royal Academy of Arts, London |
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| c1916 The Fairground, Penzance oil on canvas 139.7 x 189.9 cm |
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| 1917 2nd Lieutenant Francis Jack Chown chalk on paper 46 x 30.5 cm |
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| 1917 At the Edge of the Cliff oil on canvas 58.4 x 70.5 cm Private Collection |