Laura Knight
RA, RWS, RE, RWA, PSWA
British 1877-1970
One of the best known female artists in the first half of the 20th century, Knight was a distinguished painter of landscape and figure subjects in both oil and watercolor, and an accomplished etcher. She studied at Nottingham College of Art from 1889. In 1894 the deaths of her mother and grandmother left her dependent on her own earnings, and she taught art from a studio in the Castle Rooms, Nottingham . From 1903 she exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy , London , and in the same year married the painter Harold Knight (1874–1961); they lived in an artists' community in Staithes, north Yorkshire , until 1907, also spending time in another community in Laren , Netherlands . They then moved to Newlyn, Cornwall , attracted by the presence of a number of prominent artists.
Her sporting subjects include Ascot racing and boxing scenes. Knight won an Honorable Mention with her “Sketches of Boxers” in the Olympic Arts Competition held in London at the V & A Museum 1948. In 1965 the Royal Academy held a retrospect exhibition of her work.
She also became the first woman artist to be elected into the Royal Academy since the first female members Angelica Kauffmann and Mary Moser. Knight served as an Official War Artist during World War II and she also traveled to Nuremberg in 1946 to record the War Criminals’ Trial. She died in London .
