Boys Bathing, Newlyn Quay

Laura Knight spent 1907-1918 painting in Cornwall, and here she met the artists who would remain her life-long friends: Sir Alfred Munnings; Ernest Procter and his future wife Dod Shaw; Lamorna Birch and his family and Harold and Gert Harvey. The atmosphere of Newlyn with its hectic social life brought out the best in the artist and her work developed and flourished. The turning point in her career came when 'The Boys', a painting related to the present work depicting young boys dressing in an upturned boat on Newlyn Quay, was purchased by Sir Hugh Lane for Johannesburg Art Gallery after its successful appearance at the Royal Academy, London, in 1910 (no.360).
(see C. Fox, Dame Laura Knight, Oxford, 1988, pp.26-33).