71 - Dame Laura Knight

Dame Laura Knight (British, 1877-1970) Children in a Rowboat, 1916 oil on canvas signed Laura Knight and dated (lower left) 21 1/4 x 25 in. (54 x 63.5 cm) Property from the Estate of Joan Wellhouse Newton Stein, Jacksonville, Florida. This lot is located in Philadelphia. Framed: 28 x 32 x 2 in. The lined canvas is in overall good condition. There is some minor craquelure, for instance at top right. There is some scattered light soiling as well, visible at top left and top right. On verso, a backing board has been applied. Under UV light there is scattered inpainting visible, particularly in areas of the boat and at bottom right, but also in the four corners. Additional images available upon request. Provenance: Richard Green Gallery, London. Acquired from the above by the present owner. Exhibited: London, Richard Green Gallery, Modern British Paintings, 1988 (image on poster advertising the exhibition) Lot Essay: Dame Laura Knight painted Children in a Rowboat in 1916, during a very productive period for the artist when she was living in the seaside town of Newlyn, England. She and her husband, the painter Harold Knight, moved to the coast at the behest of Stanhope Forbes a few years before, to join his artist’s colony. Both artists soaked in the sunlit seascape and relaxed lifestyle, and their work became more impressionistic as a result, particularly in the time before the beginning of World War I. Once the war broke out, the British government forbade artists from painting on the coastline, out of safety concerns, but Knight was able to secure a special permit to continue painting there. By the mid-1920s, Dame Laura Knight was a household name in Britain, in 1929 becoming the first female artist to be made a Dame of the British Empire. Her biographer Alice Strickland called her “a woman of firsts,” as she was also the first modern female artist to be elected to the Royal Academy (since Angelica Kauffman in the 18th Century) and the first to have a solo exhibition there. She went on to create a large and varied body of work, which included portraits, landscapes, intimate scenes of the ballet and circus, and later propaganda works during World War II. She famously obtained permission to attend the Nuremberg war crimes trials so that she could produce one of her best known paintings. Children in a Rowboat captures the energy and spirit of the next generation, right in the middle of the first World War. Despite the conflicts in the wider world, the boys strip down and swim off the boat, while the girls sit on the dock and chat in their frocks and hats. Like the artist, the children seem to be able to take small pleasures in daily life and to even find beauty during a most troubling time.