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Winifred Knights
(1899 - 1947)
Lineholt Farmhouse
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Winifred Knights (1899 - 1947)
Size:
Height – 38cm
Width – 28cm
Literature: Llewellyn, Sacha, Winifred Knights, Lund Humphries, illustrated p 45
Exhibited: Winifred Knights, Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2016
The treatment of face and hands – elongated and symmetrical, with strong outline and an emphasis on the underlying anatomical geometry – would now become a defining characteristic of Knights figurative work. Knights is shown wearing a version of artistic dress, the embroidered bee motifs added for their decorative effect and possibly their esoteric iconography. The ribbon laced shoes, a fashion popularised by the celebrated ballerina Anna Pavlova would become a style favoured by Knights throughout her life.
Winifred Knights was born in Streatham, London in 1899. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art (1915’17, 1918’20 and 1926’27) . In 1919 she jointly won the Slade Summer Composition Competition with A Scene in a Village Street with Mill-Hands Conversing. In 1920, she became the first woman to win the Scholarship in Decorative Painting awarded by the British School at Rome. She remained in Italy until December 1925, marrying fellow Rome Scholar Thomas Monnington (1902’1976) in April 1924. On her return to England, Knights received a commission to paint an altarpiece for the Milner Memorial Chapel in Canterbury. A major commission for the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, on which she had been working for five years, remained unconcluded at her early death, aged 47.
Throughout her life, Winifred Knights produced work through which she explored women’s autonomy. Presenting herself as the central protagonist, and selecting models from her inner circle, she rewrote and reinterpreted fairy tale and legend, biblical narrative and pagan mythology. She was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery in 2016.
