Knight, The Fishing Fleet, 1900
Boston Museum & Art Gallery.
Knight, The Boys Newlyn Cornwall, 1909,
Johannesburg Art Gallery.
Barbara Morden’s book dealt with the British artist born to the impoverished Johnson family. Passion for Life: Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) covered Knight’s early years in Nottingham, her relationship with husband Harold, life in artists colonies, her love of ballet, circus and theatre, and travels in Europe and US. It also examined her role as the only female Official War Artist in WW2
R John Croft was the great-nephew of Laura Knight, and retold many of the tales directly from his aunt, sharing them with the author. As he did with the family photos. But, as well as retelling the family tales, Morden did thorough research into Knight’s history and legacy: correspondence, facts, events, parties, love affairs and art. Morden enhanced the book by describing the significant people who were influential in the development of the different styles in which Knight worked throughout her long career. The book allowed the reader to see Knight’s vibrant personality of course. And exploring the darker shades of her character gave this portrait depth.
Knight, Lamorna Birch and his daughters
Nottingham Uni, started in 1916
Knight, Spring,
1916-1920,
Tate, London.
Laura married artist Harold Knight in 1903 at 23, and they both joined artists’ colonies in Staithes Nth Yorkshire and Holland. They then joined Cornwall’s famous Newlyn School, socialising and sharing artistic ideas with Walter Langley, Stanhope Forbes and Alfred Munnings. Laura joined the wild social life but Harold was more cautious.
She loved painting the marginalised people on the edges of society, immersing herself in the lives of circus performers and painted them from observation. In fact in the 1930s, she travelled for several months with a touring circus. Laura also spent several years drawing and painting Gypsies at Epsom races, then went to visit a Gypsy settlement in Iver Bucks. Over some months, she visited daily and painted a number of portraits in one family. And Knight loved to get behind the scenes of attractive careers. She painted scenes of actresses and ballet dancers, capturing performers backstage, resting and changing costumes.
With her own successful ventures Knight promoted other women in British art who could achieve their own goals eg she skilfully captured the heroism of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force officers, showing the more workaday life of war-time lathe operators and munitions workers. She assisted with the war effort, creating propaganda posters for the War Artists Advisory Committee. But there was a cost. Became she became a prominent public figure who wielded considerable influence in art circles, history portrayed Knight as an artist of the Establishment, a member of the boys' clubs.
Knight, Elsie on Hassan, 1929,
Nottingham City Museums and Galleries.
Rudy Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring, 1943
Commissioned by War Artists' Advisory Committee
Imperial War Museums
Knight, The Nuremberg Trial, 1946,
Imperial War Museums London.
Barbara Morden specialised in art and literary history at Nottingham & Newcastle Universities. She was well known nationally and internationally for her entertaining and scholarly lectures and for some years worked for the Open Uni as Arts Consultant and Lecturer. Morden was a regular contributor to the English Review and has recently given lectures and gallery tours in Newcastle, Sheffield, Nottingham & Norwich. Her book easily showed that Knight was one of the most notable women artists, at home and abroad, the first female artist to be made a Dame of the British Empire.