Dame Laura Knight RA

Laura Knight, DBE, RA, RWS (1877-1970)Anna Pavlova rehearsing The Bacchanal, c. 1910-1911Signed l.l.: Laura Knight, oil on canvas45.5 x 41 cm.; 17 5/8 x 16 1/8 inchesProvenancePeter and Vera Chadwick, 1977 (according to an inscription onthe previous frame);Harry Greatorex, 1988;His sale at Sotheby’s, unidentified sale 1988(?), lot 73;Private collection U.K. until 2025Knight captures the grace, elegance and kinetic energy of the most famous ballerina of her day on stage performing her most dynamic and erotic role.Pavlova (1881 – 1931) visited London with Sergei Diaghilev's company for the first time in the summer of 1910. She caused a sensation with her dramatic Dance Bacchanal from Pepita's ballet The Seasons, choreographed by Mikhail Fokine, which was to become one of her signature roles. An erotic duet, performed with Mikhail Mordkin saw the dancers throwing garlands and striking sensual poses with theatrical abandon, wearing Greek tunics.Knight was mesmerised by the Ballets Russes when they performed in London during the years before the First World War. In particular, she became enamoured with the dancer Anna Pavlova. In her autobiography, 1965, Knight wrote: ‘The whole look of Pavlova had perfection of finish … But whatever the beauty of form may have been, she possessed an attraction all her own ... a something not of this world.’ (L. Knight, The Magic of a Line, p. 161). In 1911 she made sketches of Pavlova at the Palace Theatre, continuing her interest in the figure in motion. Pavlova often invited Knight to her home, The Ivy House in Golders Green next to Hampstead Heath, which she bought in 1912, so she could sketch her. Knight drew Pavlova’s portrait many times as well as sketching her backstage and made small enamel pieces recording her dancing. Her work helped cement the dancer’s reputation in Britain and beyond.Pavlova settled in London after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Signed and inscribed l.r.: Laura Knight/1946, Nuremberg, charcoal and watercolour56 x 38 cm.; 22 x 15 inchesProvenanceSotheby’s, Olympia 4 July 2002, lot 237, where bought by the present owner;Private collection, U.K.ExhibitedLaura Knight: A Panoramic View, MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, 9 October 2021-20 February 2022, ill. p. 190Knight suggested painting the Nuremberg Trial to the War Artists Advisory Committee in December 1945, and in early 1946 she flew to Frankfurt.The War Crimes Trial for Nazi war criminals was held in the Central Courts of Justice in Nuremberg. Knight attended the trial and made studies from a press box. She made several sketches for the finished oil (in the Imperial War Museum) and her letters to her husband Harold express the intense emotion generated at the Trial:‘I am trying my hardest for a dynamic and rather terrible build-up of the design, hoping that the placing of the masses, even apart from the detail, will convey in some way the sensation that not only I but everyone appears to feel… in it there is much pity- pity perhaps that the human creature could sink to such baseness as these poor creatures have done’.This drawing shows the back row of prisoners at the trial with Albert Speer, Konstantin von Neurath, Foreign Minister until 1938, and Hans Fritzche, the broadcaster and head of the radio division, at the very end of the row. Speer, Hitler’s favoured architect and Minister of Armaments was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment and Von Neurath to fifteen years. Fritzsche was acquitted.Hermann Goering was the end of the first row of prisoners with his own guard, next to Rudolph Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Streicher, Wilhelm Frick, Walther Funk and Hjalmar Schacht. At the other end of the back row, depicted in this drawing, sat Karl Doenitz, and next to him Erich Raeder, Baldur von Schirach, Fritz Sauckel, Alfred Jodl, Franz von Papen and Arthur Seyss-Inquart.Two less finished sketches for the Nuremberg Trial are currently on loan to the Ben Uri Gallery, London.

Signed and dated l.r.: Laura Knight/1958, graphite and black chalk on paper partially watermarked J WHATMAN, framed in a black painted frame25.5 x 36 cm.; 10 x 14 inchesFramed size 43.5 x 56 cm.; 17 1/8 x 22 inchesThe apparent Japanese influence on this drawing can also be seen in an oil of a tree with a landscape entitled ‘A Misty Sunrise’ painted in 1956 and in the collection of the Royal Academy (03/1161). Knight had a lifelong interest in trees and landscape.This drawing may have been done in the Malvern Hills where the artist and her husband Harold spent some time in the summer of 1958.

Signed and dated l.r.: Laura Knight/Dec 1923, watercolour and black chalkSight size 41.2 x 33 cm.; 16 1⁄4 x 13 inchesWhole sheet 45.6 x 39.5 cm; 41.2 x 15 1⁄2 inches; 16 1⁄2 x 15 1⁄2 inchesProvenancePrivate collection, U.K.ExhibitedMK Gallery, Milton Keynes, Laura Knight a panoramic view, 2021, ill. p. 144;Nottingham Castle Museum, Laura Knight & Caroline Walker: A Female Gaze, 2021 (no catalogue)LiteratureEd. Fay Blanchard & Anthony Spira, Laura Knight A panoramic view, 2022, ill. p. 144This striking work by Laura Knight was drawn in 1923 and is a notable example of her ‘female gaze’. Her portrait drawings of women are invariably strong and vital. Here, she adds emphasis with her trademark black chalk creating strong lines, which contrast with the vivid background in blue watercolour.It has been suggested that the sitter was Lilian Ryan, who was married to Sir Gerald Festus Kelly, one of the most fashionable society portraitists in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century and president of the Royal Academy from 1949 to 1954. During Kelly’s tenure as President, Lilian ‘Jane’ Ryan, as she was more commonly known, exhibited under the alias ‘Lilian Jelly’ to avoid accusations of cronyism.From a working-class family, Ryan (c.1898 – c.1980) had been a model for Sir George Clausen in the 1910s, and he introduced her to Gerald Kelly in 1916. They were to marry four years later and spend over fifty happy years together: indeed, Gerald painted her portrait at least fifty times, exhibiting each year at the Royal Academy and titling them ‘Jane,’ his nickname for his wife. Her many likenesses became so recognisable that when Queen Mary was introduced to her, she exclaimed “Jane, of the many Janes!”.Lilian took an interest in painting for herself in the early 1940s, and her husband encouraged her curiosity. She had a natural affinity to oils and she advanced quickly and exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1944, continuing to exhibit there for thirty years.In 1936 Laura Knight was the first woman to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy since its foundation in 1768. She battled against the structural inequalities of the art world throughout her professional life, from when she was excluded from the life room at Nottingham School of Art in 1891. In 1922 she wrote a pamphlet entitled Can Women Succeed as Artists where she identified inequality of opportunity as a major factor in the near exclusion of women from the arts in Britain. In 1937, she became the first woman to join the selection committee of the R.A., but was not invited to its annual banquet until 1967.Knight campaigned for greater recognition and status for women in the arts throughout her career and was President of the Society of Women Artists from 1932-1968. Throughout her life she took the opportunity to promote herself and her work, fight for equal renumeration and obtain high-profile commissions.

Signed l.r.: Laura Knight, watercolour over pencil 56 x 38 cm.; 22 x 15 inchesProvenancePolak Gallery, London;Christie’s, London, 23 June 1994, lot 9;Private collection U.K.;Sotheby’s, London, 13 December 2018, lot 85, where bought by the present ownerLiteratureJanet Dunbar, Laura Knight, 1975, ill. facing p. 104The subject of this watercolour is Eileen Mayo (1906-1994) depicted as a ballerina. Mayo was an artist and a favourite model of both Laura Knight and Dod Proctor. The work combines Knight’s frank depiction of the female form with her love of the stage and was drawn in the studio rather than at the theatre.Knight’s interest in ballerina’s dressing rooms started in 1919 when she was invited to draw Lopokova, the star of Diaghilev’s ballet at the Coliseum in No. 1 Dressing Room, which gives the present work its title. In her autobiography, Knight describes her fascination with the glow of the electric bulbs, the ballet shoes and the scent of powder and grease paint, and how she was allowed to sit and observe as much as she desired (L. Knight Oil Paint and Grease Paint, 1936, pp. 224-232).Knight worked on an oil of Mayo as a ballerina in 1927, entitled ‘Dressing for the Ballet’ and it was exhibited at the Royal Academy that year. The work was included in Knight’s touring exhibition of the United States in 1931 and was badly damaged, so she cut it down and completely repainted the original. The new composition called ‘No. 1 Dressing Room’, featuring Mayo topless in the identical pink tights and doing her hair in front of the mirror in an extended interior was re-exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1947 and bought by the Grundy Art Gallery, Blackpool.Excluded from the life room at Nottingham School of Art in 1891, she battled against the structural inequalities of the art world throughout her professional life and fought for greater recognition and status for women in the arts throughout her career.In 1922 she wrote a pamphlet entitled Can Women Succeed as Artists where she identified inequality of opportunity as a major factor in the near-total exclusion of women from the arts in Britain. In 1936 Laura Knight was the first woman to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy since its foundation in 1768. She was President of the Society of Women Artists from 1932 to 1968. While she became the first woman to join the selection committee of the Royal Academy in 1937, Knight was not invited to its annual banquet until 1967.