The dressing room

In 1919, Laura Knight and her husband, Harold, moved from Cornwall to St John's Wood, and here they began to form friendships with actors, composers, musicians and dancers, giving Laura access to the hidden world behind the scenes of a performance. This new perspective gave Laura the inspiration to celebrate her love of the theatre and ballet, both on and off stage, in her work. Informal dressing room scenes, depicting actresses or ballerinas getting ready for a performance, were a continual subject for the remainder of her life (see C. Fox, Dame Laura Knight, Oxford, 1988, pp. 47-8).