Passion for Life: artist Dame Laura Knight

Knight, The Fishing Fleet, 1900  

Boston Museum & Art Gallery.

Knight, The Boys Newlyn Cornwall, 1909,  

Johannesburg Art Gallery.

Barbara Morden’s book dealt with the British artist born to the impov­erished Johnson fam­ily. Passion for Life: Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) cov­er­ed Knight’s early years in Nott­ing­ham, her rel­at­ion­ship with husband Harold, life in art­ists col­on­­ies, her love of ballet, circ­us and theat­re, and travels in Eur­ope and US. It also ex­am­ined her role as the only female Offic­ial War Artist in WW2

R John Croft was the great-nephew of Laura Knight, and retold many of the tales directly from his aunt, sharing them with the author. As he did with the family photos. But, as well as retelling the fam­ily tales, Morden did thorough research into Knight’s history and leg­acy: correspondence, facts, events, parties, love affairs and art. Morden enhanced the book by describing the significant people who were influen­t­­ial in the development of the different styles in which Knight worked throughout her long career. The book all­owed the reader to see Knight’s vibrant pers­onality of course. And expl­or­ing the darker shades of her character gave this portrait depth.

Knight, Lamorna Birch and his daughters

Nottingham Uni, started in 1916

 

Knight, Spring, 1916-1920, 

Tate, London.

 

Born Laura Johnson, she started painting at 13 by enrolling in the Nottingham School of Art, and studied in France as well. She only stopped studying when her mother died, and she was forc­ed to start earn­ing money for the family. In fact, she unhappily took on her mother’s private art pupils.

Laura married artist Harold Knight in 1903 at 23, and they both joined artists’ colonies in Staithes Nth Yorkshire and Holland. They then joined Cornwall’s famous Newlyn School, socialising and shar­­ing artistic ideas with Walter Langley, Stanhope Forb­es and Alfred Mun­n­ings. Laura joined the wild social life but Harold was more cautious.

She loved painting the marginalised people on the edges of society, immersing her­self in the lives of circus performers and painted them from ob­servation. In fact in the 1930s, she travelled for several months with a tour­ing circus. Laura also spent several years drawing and painting Gypsies at Epsom races, then went to visit a Gypsy settle­ment in Iver Bucks. Over some months, she visited daily and painted a number of portraits in one family. And Knight loved to get behind the scenes of attractive car­eers. She painted scenes of actresses and ballet dancers, cap­t­uring performers backstage, resting and changing costumes.

With her own successful ventures Knight prom­ot­ed other wo­men in Brit­ish art who could ach­ieve their own goals eg she skilfully captured the heroism of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force offic­ers, showing the more workaday life of war-time lathe operators and munitions workers. She assisted with the war effort, creating propa­g­anda posters for the War Artists Advisory Committee. But there was a cost. Became she became a prominent public figure who wielded considerable influence in art circles, history portrayed Knight as an artist of the Establishment, a member of the boys' clubs. 

 

Knight, Elsie on Hassan, 1929, 

Nottingham City Museums and Galleries.

For another World War Two painting that focused on women's contributions, see Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring  1943, displayed at the Imperial War Museums. Professionally operating an industrial lathe was something that would never have been expected from a young woman.

 

Rudy Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring, 1943

Commissioned by War Artists' Advisory Committee

Imperial War Museums

Knight was a core re­c­order of the crucial Nur­emberg Trials in 1946 when she was in her late 60s. In it she showed the Court, press box and the accused, and above the painting, see the devastation of a war-torn landscape.

Knight, The Nuremberg Trial, 1946,

Imperial War Museums London.

Barbara Morden specialised in art and literary history at Not­­t­ingham & Newcastle Universities. She was well known nationally and internat­ion­ally for her entertaining and scholarly lectures and for some years worked for the Open Uni as Arts Consul­tant and Lect­urer. Morden was a regular contributor to the English Review and has recently given lect­ures and gallery tours in New­castle, Sheffield, Nottingham & Norwich. Her book easily showed that Knight was one of the most notable wom­en ar­t­ists, at home and abroad, the first female artist to be made a Dame of the British Empire. 

The book prob­ed the myths that ap­p­eared after Knight’s death and continued to be woven around the art­ist. Knight had been a hard-working artist who longed to penetrate the mystery of form and colour. Thus she became one of Britain’s most pop­ular C20th Impres­s­ion­ist painters, but her brave colours eventually became unfashionable. She had been comfortable with the fig­urative, realist tradition but critics seemed to have wanted more Expressionism. Nonetheless during her long and fruitful career, she cont­in­ued to paint and exhibit and in 1965, becoming the first female artist to hold a solo retrospective at the RA.

These great images came from Daily Art Magazine.