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Laura Knight

Laura Knight

Laura Knight, Still life of Chrysanthemums, Mid 1920s

Laura Knight

Still life of Chrysanthemums, Mid 1920s
Oil on canvas
15 1/2 x 11 1/2 in. (39.4 x 29.2 cm)
License Image
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Further images

  • (View a larger image of thumbnail 1 ) Laura Knight, Still Life of Phlox and Lupins, 1924
  • Still life of Chrysanthemums
To view all current artworks for sale visit philipmould.com Laura Knight is one of Britain’s most admired artists. Only a handful of still-lifes by Knight are known, and this rare...
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To view all current artworks for sale visit philipmould.com

Laura Knight is one of Britain’s most admired artists. Only a handful of still-lifes by Knight are known, and this rare example confirms her talent in this genre.

Knight made waves at the Royal Academy of Arts as an artist of ‘firsts’; after she became the first woman artist to be made Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1929, she became the first woman elected to full membership of the Royal Academy in 1936; a year later she was the first woman artist to sit on the hanging committee for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition; and in 1965 she became the first woman to have a solo exhibition at the Royal Academy.

Flower paintings by Knight are exceedingly rare. In 1908, Knight exhibited a watercolour entitled Chrysanthemums at the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition, but after this point, scarcely any of her submitted works were still lifes, let alone flower paintings.[1] As a celebrated figurative painter, she is highly acclaimed for her large-scale composition in the highly realist tradition; this still-life, however, signals a more expressive side of her practice. Painted with thick impasto, quite unlike her more illustrative works, the present work highlights Knight’s often overlooked mastery of design and texture.


[1] ‘Still Life and Watercolours’, Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 9 May 1908, p. 12.

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Provenance

Private collection, Kent, until 2015.[1]

[1] The owner's mother, Violet Byfield and her twin sister, Lillian, modelled for the artist.

Exhibitions

MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, Laura Knight: A Panoramic View, 9 October 2021 - 20 February 2022.

Literature

F. Blanchard and A. Spira (eds.), Laura Knight: A Panoramic View. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2021, illus. p. 30.

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