Laura Knight (1877–1970) was a pioneering English artist who became one of the most popular and successful painters in 20th-century Britain. Working in a figurative, realist style with strong Impressionist influences, she broke numerous gender barriers in the male-dominated art world of her time:
In 1928 she won a silver medal in the art competition at the Amsterdam Olympic Games for her painting Boxer
The following year, she was created a Dame of the British Empire (DBE) for her services to art.
In 1936, she became the first woman since 1768 to be elected as a full member of the Royal Academy of Arts.
Her 1965 retrospective at the Royal Academy was the first ever solo exhibition accorded to a woman by the institution
Best known for her backstage depictions of the ballet (specifically the Ballets Russes), the theatre and the circus, Knight also painted poignant portraits of Romany Gypsy communities at racecourses like Epsom and Iver, often using her Rolls-Royce as a mobile studio. Early in her career, she had established herself as a central figure of the Newlyn School in Cornwall where she developed a vibrant plein air technique. During WWII, she served as an official war artist and created remarkable images of women art work - perhaps the most famous of which is Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring (Imperial War Museums). In 1946, Knight was commissioned to record the Nuremberg war crimes trials. Her large-scale oil painting, The Nuremberg Trial (Imperial War Museums) combines realism of the courtroom with a surreal background of a ruined city in flames.
Laura Knight by Alice Strickland is number 4 in the Modern Women Artists series of mini-monographs about brilliant women artists. Find out more about this artist, and start collecting the series, here.
