institutional
Laura Knight
(1877 - 1970)
Self-portrait
Private Collection
Laura Knight (1877 - 1970)
Signed
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 in. (101.6 x 76.2 cm)
Size:
Height – 101.6cm
Width – 76.2cm
Provenance: Laporte Art Collection until 2009; Private collection.
Sixteen months of preparation preceded the one-day ceremony. The Coronation took place in Westminster Abbey. Soldiers
from throughout the Commonwealth marched in parade prior to the Queen’s
arrival. Laura Knight was one of the official artists commissioned to commemorate the event. Her rapidly painted and highly coloured canvas – which is
likely to have been painted on the spot – records the Coronation procession passing through Oxford Street with Scottish Guards on parade. Oxford Street, although since rebuilt, was characterised by narrow frontages (still in evidence around the junction with Bond Street).
The coronation of the Queen was the first ever to be televised
watched by 27 million British viewers (when its population was 37
million) who had acquired television sets especially for the event. It
was also the world’s first major international event to be broadcast on
television with 750 commentators broadcasting descriptions in 39
languages.
The published official route.
The Queen’s Coronation 1953 is the title of a major exhibition to be held at
Buckingham Palace from Saturday, 27 July 2013 to Sunday, 29 September 2013.
We are grateful to Michael Barker for assistance.
IN 1953 a new building for Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, the first major commission for Louis Kahn, opened.
Anthony Blunt’s Art and Architecture in France 1500‚Äì1700 was published.
ARTWORKS created in 1953
Francis Bacon – Study after Vel√°zquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X
Alexander Calder – Acoustic Clouds (installation, University City of Caracas)
Jacob Epstein – Social Consciousness (sculpture group, Philadelphia)
Barbara Hepworth – Hieroglyph (sculpture)
Edward Hopper – Office in a Small City (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Willem de Kooning – Woman III
L. S. Lowry – Football Ground
Henry Moore – Draped Reclining Figure (bronze)
Mark Rothko – No. 61 (Rust and Blue)
Sir Muirhead Bone, (b. 1876) and Francis Picabia, (b.1879) died in 1953
Laura Knight (maiden name Johnson) was born in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, the daughter of Charles and Charlotte Johnson. Her father died not long after her birth, and Laura Knight grew up in a family that struggled with financial problems.
In 1899 she was sent to France with the intention that she would eventually study art at a Parisian atelier. However, events would prevent this course of study.
Instead, after a short time in French schools, Laura Johnson returned to England. There, at the age of 13 she entered the Nottingham School of Art, one of the youngest students ever to join the school.
Whilst at school, she met one of the most promising students, Harold Knight, aged 17. Laura Johnson determined that the best method of learning was to copy Harold’s technique. They soon became friends, and in 1903 Laura Johnson married Harold Knight (1874-1961).
In 1907 the Knights moved to the artists’ colony in Newlyn, Cornwall, alongside Lamorna Birch, Alfred Munnings and Aleister Crowley, where she painted in an Impressionist style. The Beach (1908), widely admired both by other artists and the public, is an example of this style. Another interesting work is The Green Feather, which was painted in one day. In 1913 she made a painting that was a first for a woman artist, Self Portrait with Nude, showing Laura Knight with a nude model (fellow artist Ella Naper was the model).
After World War I, the Knights moved to London where Laura Knight met some of the most famous ballet dancers of the day, such as Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes with Lydia Lopokova and Enrico Cecchetti, and Anna Pavlova. Her most famous work dates from this period.
While she was a well-educated and by no means, racist woman, Laura Knight, using a term common at the time, did make what today would be considered a racist remark after she had seen an African-American for the first time. It came after a recent visit to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore where she had accompanied her husband. “The babies of American darkies,” she declared, “Are among the most beautiful things in the world. In fact, to the artist there is a whole world of beauty which ought to be explored in negro life in America.” [New York Times, 3 November 1927, Page 23, Column 5.]
In 1928 the circus became her inspiration.
In 1929 that she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire and in 1936 she became the first woman elected to the Royal Academy.
In the 1930s, she began to paint the world of horse racing and Gypsies.
After World War II, she was the official war artist at the Nuremberg Trials. The result was The Dock, Nuremberg (1946). She continued to paint even after her husband’s death in 1961. She produced over 250 works in her lifetime as well as two autobiographies, Oil Paint and Grease Paint (1936) and The Magic of a Line (1965).
