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.