Person    | Female  Born 4/8/1877  Died 7/7/1970

Dame Laura Knight

Categories: Art

Painter. Born Derbyshire with the surname Johnson. Met her future husband Harold at Nottingham Art School, though they did not become romantically involved until 1894, after they had both left, and married in 1903. From 1907 they were in an artist's colony in Cornwall. At the end of WW1 they moved to London where Laura painted Diaghilev's ballet company from behind the scenes, a vantage point that she would use repeatedly over the years. In 1922 they took a long lease on the house in Langford Place where they each had a studio. Later they also had a home near Malvern. Harold was a successful portrait painter and Laura achieved success with a wide range of subjects, including circus performers and gypsies and was an official war artist in WW2. She was the first woman elected to the Royal Academy since its 1768 foundation, in 1936 - the year before Harold was elected. She died at Langford Place. 

This is an unusual story of married artists, in that the wife not only continued her career but was, if anything, more successful than the husband. The marriage was childless, which gave Laura unusually equal opportunities to work and succeed, and she did.

Our picture is a self-portrait and shows Knight painting a nude, a shocking thing for a woman (but not a man) to be doing in 1913; at art school she had been excluded from the life class.

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Dame Laura Knight

Commemorated ati

Laura & Harold Knight

They lived here 1922 - 1970 and this is where Laura died.

Read More

Other Subjects

Royal Society of Arts Murals

Royal Society of Arts Murals

Painted by the artist James Barry. They show, 'Orpheus', 'A Grecian Harvest-Home', 'Crowning the Victors at Olympia', 'Commerce or the Triumph of the Thames', 'The Distribution of Premiums in the S...

Group, Art

1 memorial
Phil May

Phil May

Illustrator. Born Philip William May at 66 Wallace Street, New Wortley, Leeds. He worked at several jobs before moving to Australia as cartoonist on the 'Sydney Bulletin'. In 1888 he went to study ...

Person, Art, Australia, France, Italy

1 memorial
W. H. C. Groome

W. H. C. Groome

Member of the Ealing District Council in 1899. Bear Alley has a full biography of Groome by Robert J Kirkpatrick, with many illustrations: ""W.H.C. Groome was one of the most prolific children’s b...

Person, Art, Politics & Administration

1 memorial
John Hungerford Pollen

John Hungerford Pollen

Decorative artist. Born 6 New Burlington Street to Richard and Anne, sister to Charles Cockerell. Ordained as an Anglican priest in 1845, but converted to Roman Catholicism in1852. He worked on man...

Person, Art

1 memorial
Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg

Poet and painter. Born Bristol of Lithuanian parents. A poet of WW1. Critical of the war but enlisted because he needed employment. Killed in the trenches of France.

Person, Art, Poetry, France, Lithuania

2 memorials