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 (Please contact me before quoting from the above information publically, and credit myself and this website)
