DAME LAURA KNIGHT DBE RA RWS RE 1877 – 1970 (née JOHNSON)
Laura Johnson was born in Long Eaton, Nottinghamshire. Her mother, Charlotte, left her father shortly before Laura’s birth and lived with her other two daughters (one of whom died in 1889) and her own mother in a rented house in Nottingham. Laura met her future husband, Harold Knight when they were both studying at the city’s School of Art.
Charlotte Johnson supported her young family by giving painting lessons. She contracted cancer when Laura was fourteen and her pupils were taken on by her daughter, young as she was. While Charlotte was dying she came to an arrangement with Harold regarding her daughter’s future, almost certainly arranging that the two should marry eventually.
Laura’s grandmother died shortly after her mother leaving herself and her sister, Evangeline Agnes (known as Sissie) alone. They received sporadic help from various family members, the most useful and far-reaching of which was a trip with her grandmother’s sister, Aunt West, to Staithes. Rosie Good, a pupil of Laura’s came too. Harold stayed in the village separately.
Staithes entranced Laura and she and Harold were to spend most of the next ten years there, staying with local families and becoming accepted as part of the community. During this period they both worked hard to have their work accepted by major galleries with increasing success.
Before coming to Staithes Harold had studied at the Academie Julian in Paris and both he and Laura had been influenced by an exhibition of work by Newlyn artists which they saw in Nottingham.
Harold, always confident in his work, knew his own style from an early age and concentrated on developing it. Laura lacked confidence in her approach, although not in her ability. Perhaps this was partially due to her having been thrust into the professional art world, as a teacher, at a remarkably young age. Until her marriage to Harold in 1903 she soaked up the work of artists whom she admired.
I believe this struggle to develop her own style led to her undervaluing the power of the work she produced during her Staithes period.
After their marriage, and encouraged by Hopwood, Laura and Harold spent time in Laren in Holland which Laura found immensely helpful to her. When she returned to paint in Staithes for the final time, she sensed at last ‘freedom and a growing power’ in her work. (p 159)
Writing subjectively, I believe her Staithes period was her best. The way in which she writes of Staithes and its people (‘a place and a people apart’) shines through in her paintings and sketches. Her escape to the ‘warmth and light’ of Cornwall was reflected in a polish and comparative detachment in her pictures from that time on. The rawness and the realism of her Staithes work, and of Harold’s, transports us back a hundred years to the people, the place and the hour.
Both Harold and Laura were founder members of the Staithes Art Club. Laura was elected a member of the
Nottingham Society of Artists in 1908 and a full Member of the Royal Society of Painters in Water Colours in 1928, the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1932, the Society of Women Artists in 1933 and of the Royal Academy in 1936. In 1929 she was made a Dame of the British Empire. Her work is in the collection of Tate Britain, the Imperial War Museum (she was the official artist for the Nuremburg Trials after WW2) and public galleries in Aberdeen, Blackpool, Bolton, Cambridge, Coventry, Dundee, Glasgow, Greenock, Hereford, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newport, Nottingham, Oldham, Preston, Rochdale, Stoke-on-Trent and Whitby. She exhibited Agnew and Sons, the Alpine Club Gallery, Royal Society of Artists, Birmingham, the Baillie Gallery, Colnaghi & Co. Galleries, the Fine Art Society, the Grosvenor Gallery, the Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts, the Goupil Gallery, the International Society, the Walker Gallery Liverpool, the Leicester Gallery, Manchester City Art Gallery, Nottingham Art Gallery, the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, the Royal Academy, the Royal Hibernian Academy, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Society of Painters in Watercolours, Society of Women Artists, the Staithes Art Club and the Yorkshire Union of Artists.
Bibliography:
Oil Paint and Grease Paint, Autobiography of Laura Knight, Penguin Books 1936
Staithes Group Centenary Exhibition, Rosamund Jordan 2003
The Staithes Group, Peter Phillips, Phillips and Sons, Marlow1993
The Yorkshire Union of Artists 1888 – 1922, Dennis Child, Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society Ltd, Leeds 2001
The Dictionary of British Artists 1880 - 1940, J. Johnson & A. Greutzner, Antique Collectors’ Club, Woodbridge 1976
© Rosamund Jordan 2005
