Knight, Laura - Gaudy Beggars - art postcard c.1950s

• Art Postcard

   

• Work of art title: Gaudy Beggars
• Artist (if known): Dame Laura Knight
• Media or other details:  painting
• Publisher / Gallery: Aberdeen Art Gallery / Medici Society Ltd.
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp & postmark details (if relevant): na
• Size: modern
• Notes & condition details:

NOTES:

Size: 'Modern' is usually around 6in x 4in / 'Old Standard' is usually around 5 1/2in x 3 1/2in. Larger sizes mentioned, but if you need to know the exact size please ask.

All postcards are not totally new and are pre-owned. It's inevitable that older cards may show signs of ageing and use, particularly sent through the post. Any faults other than normal ageing are noted.

Stock No.: A676

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information:

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Dame Laura Knight, DBE, RA RWS (4 August 1877 – 7 July 1970) was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition who embraced English Impressionism. During her long career, Knight was among the most successful and popular painters in Britain. In 1929 she was created a Dame and in 1936 became the first woman elected to the Royal Academy since its foundation in 1768. Her large retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy, in 1965, was another first for a woman.^[1] Although Knight was known for painting amidst the world of the theatre and ballet in London, and for being a war artist during the Second World War, she was also greatly interested in, and inspired by, more marginalised communities and individuals including Gypsies and circus performers. Her success in the male-dominated British art establishment paved the way for greater status and recognition for women artists.^[2]

Laura Johnson was born in Long Eaton, Derbyshire, the youngest of three daughters to Charles and Charlotte Johnson.^[3] Her father died not long after her birth, and Laura grew up in a family that struggled with financial problems.^[4] In 1889, she was sent to France with the intention that she would eventually study art at a Parisian atelier. After a short time in French schools, she returned to England.

Charlotte Johnson did some part-time teaching at the Nottingham School of Art and managed to get Laura Johnson enrolled as an 'artisan student' there, paying no fees, aged just thirteen.^[2][5] Aged fifteen, Laura Johnson took over her mother's teaching duties when Charlotte became seriously ill. Later she won a modest scholarship and the gold medal in the national student competition held by the then South Kensington Museum. She continued to give private lessons after she left the Art School as both her and her sister Evangeline Agnes, known as Sissie, had been left to live together on very little money, after the deaths of their mother, their sister Nellie and both of their grandmothers.^[5] At school, Laura met one of the most promising students, Harold Knight, then aged 17, and determined that the best method of learning was to copy Harold's technique. They became friends, and were married in 1903.^[6]

In 1894, Harold Knight and Laura Johnson visited Staithes, a fishing village on the Yorkshire coast, for a holiday and soon returned, accompanied by Sissie, to live and work there. In Staithes, Laura Johnson drew the people of the fishing village and the surrounding farms showing the hardship and poverty of their lives. She made studies, paintings and watercolours, often painting in muted, shadowy tones. Lack of money for expensive materials meant she produced few oil paintings at this time. Local children would sit for her for pennies giving her time to develop her figure painting technique. Less successful at this time were her landscape and thematic works. Although she painted on the moors, high inland from Staithes, she did not consider herself successful at resolving these studies into finished pieces. Later she recalled:

""Even though my studio was so often warmed by burning canvases and drawings I do not regret all the experimental work done and destroyed. Staithes was too big a subject for an immature student, but working there I developed a visual memory which has stood me in good stead ever since.""

Laura Johnson and Harold Knight were married in 1903 and made their first trip to the Netherlands in 1904. They spent six weeks there that year and six months there in 1905. They visited the artists colony at Laren, a group of followers of the Hague School of artists who had been painting in remote rural communities since the 1850s. The Knights made a third trip to Laren in 1906 before spending that winter in Yorkshire.^[5]

In late 1907, the Knights moved to Cornwall, staying first in Newlyn, before moving to Lamorna.^[7] Here, alongside Lamorna Birch, Alfred Munnings and Aleister Crowley, they became central figures in the Newlyn artists colony.^[8] By March 1908, both had work exhibited at the Newlyn Art Gallery. By this time Harold Knight was an established professional portrait painter while Laura Knight was still developing her art. Around Newlyn, the Knights found themselves among a group of sociable and energetic artists which appears to have allowed the more vivid and dynamic aspects of Laura's personality to come to the fore.

Laura Knight spent the summer of 1908 working on the beach at Newlyn making studies for her large painting of children in bright sunlight. The Beach was shown at the Royal Academy in 1909 and considered a great success showing Laura painting in a more Impressionist style then she had previously.^[5] About this time Knight began painting compositions of women in the open air, often on the rocks at Lamorna. Knight would sometimes use models from London who were prepared to pose naked. Although there was some resentment locally of this, the local landowner was fully supportive and allowed Knight and the other artists a free rein.^[9] Another work from this time is The Green Feather, which was painted, and reworked due to a change in the weather, outdoors in a single day and shows the model Dolly Snell in an emerald evening dress with a hat and large feather.^[10] Knight sent the painting to the international exhibition held at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh and it was purchased by the National Gallery of Canada for £400.^[11]

In 1913, Knight made a painting that was a first for a woman artist, Self Portrait with Nude, showing herself painting a nude model, the artist Ella Naper.^[12] The painting is a complex, formal composition in a studio setting. Using mirrors, Knight painted herself and Naper as seen by someone entering the studio behind them both. As an art student Knight had not been permitted to directly paint nude models but, like all female art students at the time, was restricted to working from casts and copying existing drawings. Knight deeply resented this and Self Portrait with Nude is a clear challenge, and reaction, to those rules. The painting was first shown, in 1913, at the Passmore Edwards Art Gallery in Newlyn and was well received by both the local press and other artists. Although the Royal Academy rejected exhibiting the painting, it was shown at the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers in London, as The Model. The Daily Telegraph critic called the painting ""vulger"" and suggested that it ""might quite appropriately have stayed in the artist's studio."" Despite this reaction, Knight continued to exhibit the painting throughout her career and it continued to receive press criticism. After Knight died, the picture, now known simply as Self Portrait (1913), was purchased by the National Portrait Gallery and is now considered both a key work in the story of female self-portraiture and as symbolic of wider female emancipation.^[2][13]

During World War I, Harold Knight registered as a conscientious objector and was eventually sent to work as a farm labourer. Wartime censorship rules included restrictions on painting around the British coastline which caused problems for Laura Knight, particularly when painting Spring which was shown at the Royal Academy in 1916 but which Knight later reworked.^[5] Also in 1916, Knight received a £300 commission to paint a canvas for the Canadian Government War Records office on the theme of Physical Training in a Camp, and produced a series of paintings of boxing matches at Witley, Surrey.^[14] Knight worked with Ella Naper, who was experienced in the technique, to produce a set of small enamel pieces featuring several ballet dancers which were shown at the Fine Art Society in London in 1915.^[15] Special permits available after 1915 allowed Knight to continue her paintings of cliff-top landscapes. Several of these were completed from studies in the Knights' first London studio after they moved to the capital in 1919. During 1920 and 1921 Laura met and painted backstage some of the most famous ballet dancers of the day from Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.^[6][16] Subjects included Lydia Lopokova, Anna Pavlova and the dance teacher Enrico Cecchetti. Knight also painted backstage, and in the dressing rooms, at Birmingham Repertory Theatre productions.^[5] In the early 1920s Knight bought Sir George Clausen's printing press and began etching. She produced ninety prints between 1923 and 1925, including a railway poster advertising travel to Twickenham. In 1922 Knight made her first trip to America, where she served on the jury at the Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Pictures.^[14]

In 1926 Harold Knight spent several months at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA, painting portrait commissions of surgeons. Laura joined him there and was given permission to paint at the Baltimore Children's Hospital and in the racially segregated wards of the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Knight remarked that, ""The babies of American darkies 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.""^[17] Whilst in Baltimore Knight painted a nurse, Pearl Johnson, who took her to meetings and concerts of the early American civil rights movement.^[13] Knight also hired a mother and child model to pose for the composition originally known as the Madonna of the Cotton Fields. Knight took these paintings back to London with her and they feature in the Pathé newsreel produced to mark her election as an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1927.^[2]

In the early 1920s, Laura Knight visited the Bertram Mills Circus at Olympia in West London. Mills' circus was a highly polished show with internationally renowned performers. Knight painted some of these performers, such as the clown Whimsical Wilson, several times.^[2] Charivari or The Grand Parade, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1929 depicts practically the entire circus cast of performers and animals.^[10] Throughout 1929 and 1930 Knight went on a tour of British towns with the combined Bertram Mills and Great Carmo's Circus. Painting within a working circus forced Knight to paint at great speed as the performers rarely had much time to pose. Knight responded by painting directly onto the canvas without any preliminary drawing. Whilst this led to some of her circus scenes appearing 'flat' her paintings of small groups of clowns, such as The Three Clowns (1930) and Old Time Clowns (1957) were much more successful. Whilst Knights' Circus Folk exhibition, at the Alpine Club in 1930, was heavily criticized in art journals, her paintings of more mundane subjects, such as domestic interiors and London streets, were highly praised. Notable works from this period include Susie and the Wash-basin (1927), Blue and Gold (1927), A Cottage Bedroom (1929) and Spring in St. John's Wood (1933). In 1934 Knight developed a series of circus designs for the Modern Art for the Table tableware range produced by Clarice Cliff.^[18]

type=printed postcards

theme=artists signed

sub-theme=art

number of items=single

period=1945 - present

postage condition=unposted