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Lot Essay
In 1905 the Knights made their second summer visit to Holland studying, on this occasion, the work of Vermeer and Rembrandt in the Rijksmuseum and visiting the artists' colony at Laren, where they lodged at the celebrated Pension Kam. The experience had a long-lasting effect on Harold Knight, ultimately encouraging him to forsake Laura's plein-air pantheism for the simple ingredients of the domestic interior. Sunlight falling on the polished surface of a side table, ultimately excited his sensibilities more than the sensuous gaiety of the rock pools around Lamorna Cove (see lot 37). Here he posed a single pensive figure by a window, sewing, flower arranging or reading a book or a letter. Compared with the more opulent interiors by Orpen and Lavery, Knight's canvases retain an element of stylish rusticity. In 1912 he and Laura had moved from Trewarveneth Farm on the hill above Newlyn to Oak Hill, St Buryan, a group of cottages converted into a single dwelling by their friend Colonel Paynter, the local landlord. The Black Jacket was painted in the same setting as A Flower, Knight's Royal Academy exhibit of 1915.
It is likely that this later picture was actually painted three years earlier, since the model wears the same black tunic and striped skirt and she sits by the deep window recess that opens out on to sunlit foliage. Table, chair and picture are the same; only the curtains have been changed and flowers have been placed in the bowl. The spectre of Vermeer had risen in the Cornish hillsides, and as Frank Rutter later remarked, these works contained 'a quiet mastery and exquisiteness rivalling the work of the "perfect painter" of seventeenth-century Holland'.
KMc.
We are grateful to John Croft, F.C.A., the artist's great nephew, for his help in researching this picture, which will appear in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Dame Laura Knight.
It is likely that this later picture was actually painted three years earlier, since the model wears the same black tunic and striped skirt and she sits by the deep window recess that opens out on to sunlit foliage. Table, chair and picture are the same; only the curtains have been changed and flowers have been placed in the bowl. The spectre of Vermeer had risen in the Cornish hillsides, and as Frank Rutter later remarked, these works contained 'a quiet mastery and exquisiteness rivalling the work of the "perfect painter" of seventeenth-century Holland'.
KMc.
We are grateful to John Croft, F.C.A., the artist's great nephew, for his help in researching this picture, which will appear in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the works of Dame Laura Knight.