Knight was raised as the youngest of three girls by her single mother, who was separated from her father. Aged just twelve she was sent to France to stay with a relative and have art lessons. While she was away, her older sister died, and on her return aged 13, she enrolled at Nottingham College of Art, where she met and later married Harold Knight. The deaths of her mother and grandmother meant that Knight and her sister were forced, from a young age, to support themselves.
Early work produced at the artist’s community in Staithes, Yorkshire, provides an insight into the narrative style that would inform much of Knight’s output. Whilst working to capture images of women and young children, the resulting works tell us much about the poverty and lives of the working poor at that time.
Moving to the artist’s colony in Newlyn, Cornwall, provided Knight with the opportunity to further embedd elements of narrative within her work. The Green Feather presents the viewer with an image of a young woman, on a beach, in a lavish green dress, and wearing a hat that sports a large green feather. Who the woman is, and why she appears to be waiting on the beach, are presented as parts of a narrative that viewers may want to fill in themselves. Likewise, the painting Self-portrait with Nude offers viewers the chance to enter into the artist’s point of view. As a student Laura Knight had been forbidden from the life room at her art college, and had been forced to work from plaster casts.
Self-portrait with Nude (1913)
After building a strong reputation during the inter-war years, Knight was commissioned by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee to produce work that supported the home front. Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring was voted picture of the year in 1943 at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring
Ruby had progressed from being a shop assistant before being recruited to an armaments factory where she achieved a standard, in two years, that would have taken a man eight years to master. As an outstanding factory worker she was chosen as a model by the Ministry of Supply as part of an effort to encourage women to contribute to war work. As Ruby could not be spared from work, Laura Knight travelled to the factory in Newport, and painting mostly onsite, finished the picture in three weeks. Knight has made particular choices in the composition of this work, to ensure that the government’s intended message could be delivered – whilst Ruby is clearly highly skilled, she has not lost her femininity, her curled hair escaping from its net, and wears lipstick – signifiers that it was believed might encourage women to support essential industries. The painting was a success, and copied as a poster and hung in factories to boost morale.
Laura Knight’s working life involved long periods in which she immersed herself in close-knit, marginalised communities, for example, circus performers, gypsies and theatre companies. She emerged from these experiences with the material necessary to create images that provide viewers with a window into the interior world of these sometimes inaccessible communities.
As one of the first women to be elected to the Royal Academy, Knight was an excellent self-publicist, producing two autobiographies, the first timed to coincide with her election to the Academy, the second published the same year as her retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy. According to Valentine & Wickham, (2019, p. 8) both ‘detail the poverty and hardship of her childhood and her struggle to become an artist…’
Laura Knight according to Morden, B (2015) p 5 ‘wrote well and with lyrical and dramatic expression that led to her trying her hand at poetry and writing for the theatre. However diverse and fascinating this material, her versatility, energy and ambition are best expressed through her paintings…’ Fortunately for the Story-Teller’s collective, Dame Knight chose to focus her talents upon the production of a rich collection of narrative paintings, and her position in the collective remains secure.