Watercolours, 15"x19"signed. A rare, impressiomist Staithes Group style and period watercolour by Harold Knight.
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Watercolours, 11½"x13½", signed. This charming watercolour of Staithes itself shows Cowbar's shadow darkening the foreground, as it does every evening. Harold Knight must have managed to paint it on a Sunday: the village girls are sitting on the beach in their best clothes, not working or at school. Painting on Sundays was disapproved of by the villagers who once pelted Rowland Hill with fish heads for doing so! SOLD
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Oils on board13½"x9½", signed. The Knights went to paint in Holland with Hopwood on two occasions shortly after they were married. They were still painting in Staithes and living in Roxby between their visits to Laren. It was during these two extended visits abroad that Harold in particular developed an interest in painting interiors. This one is beautifully composed and in a restricted palette which emphases the sense of calm in the picture and focuses on the way the light from the window illuminates the scene.
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Watercolours, 13¼" x12", signed. This Laren interior uses light pouring through a window to similar effect. It is interesting to explore its effect in a room and the figures and artifacts in both pictures. We are seeing the scenes through Harold's eyes a century later.
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HAROLD KNIGHT RA ROI RP 1874-1961 Staithes Group & Newlyn School

Harold Knight was born in Nottingham, the son of an architect who longed to be an artist and was jealous of his son’s talent. After attending Nottingham Boy’s High School he enrolled first at the City’s School of Art, where he was a star
pupil, and then at the Academy Julian in Paris.

He met his future wife, Laura Johnson, at art school, and it is believed that her mother arranged, before she died in 1892, that the two would marry eventually.

After his return he went to Staithes for the first time with Laura, her sister and her aunt. Harold lodged with Tom Porritt and his family in Chruch Street and was joined by Arthur Friedenson and a Nottingham artist called alsebrook who was later replaced by Fred Mayor.

Staithes period pictures by either Harold Knight or his wife, Laura, or not easy to find. During the time that they were based in the village, itself or in Roxby they had two extended stays in the Dutch village of Laren in both 1904 and 1905. It was in Laren that the Knights first began to paint domestic interiors.

Not long after their return to Roxby the Knights moved away from the Yorkshire coast and based themselves in Newlyn where Harold began to concentrate on portrait painting. In many ways this seems to be the logical conclusion to his time in Staithes: his watercolour portrait of a young Staithes widow, ‘Grief’, is the most powerful portrait I have ever seen.

After the first World War the Knights settled in London, moving to Malvern
during the Second World War.

Harold was elected a member of the Staithes Art Club in 1901, of the Royal
Institute of Oil Painters in 1906, while he was still in Staithes, of the Royal
Society of Protrait Painters in 1926 and of the Royal Academy in 1937.

He has work in public collections includingTate Britain, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, the National Museum of Wales, the National Portrait Gallery and abroad.

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 2006