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Lot Essay
Beginning in the 1920s, Laura Knight developed an interest in depicting the fluidity and agility of form embodied by circus performers and ballerinas which she would pursue for the remainder of her career, attending performances where she was able to study figures in motion or in complex poses first-hand. In 1944, she branched into illustrating a new form of performance, the ‘Ice Ballet’, as she was commissioned to paint the ice skaters at the Blackpool Ice Drome. The rink, opened in 1937, was the first purpose-built ice rink in the world, and Knight found in ice skating a way to capture not only the elegance of body line she found so captivating in ballerinas, but also the challenge of capturing the effects of speed and movement in those positions as well. A wonderfully immediate pen and ink study for the present lot is held by the Royal Academy of Arts, London, its energetic line and execution emphasizing the movement and atmosphere Knight sought to capture in her subject.
In the present work Knight takes as her subject the great Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie (1912-1969). A giant of the sport and integral to the development of figure skating into the sport we know today, Henie is the only female figure skater to have won three consecutive Olympic gold medals, the only skater of any gender to ever win ten consecutive World titles, and one of only two women to win six consecutive European titles (Henie’s record was equalled in 1988 by Katerina Witt). She is credited with popularising white skating boots and shorter skirts for female figure skaters, which allowed them to perform more complicated and athletic jumps and spins and emphasize the elegance of the skater’s extension, and she is also credited as the first figure skater to incorporate choreographic elements into her performances, actually interpreting the music she selected to play while she performed. Following her groundbreaking figure skating career, Henie went on to have a career as a Hollywood actress, performing in fifteen films for 20th Century Fox, almost all of which included skating numbers, and touring the world performing in ice shows which not only popularized the sport with the wider public but also provided less well-known skaters with the opportunity to make a living through their skating. So intrinsically linked is Henie with the sport that her commemorative concrete block in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood includes not only the traditional handprints and signature, but also the impression of her skate blades. Henie was later an art collector as well, and she and her third husband, the shipping magnate Niels Onstad, founded the Henie-Onstad Art Centre in Norway in 1968, the year before her death.
The painting is to be included in the catalogue raisonné of Dame Laura Knight currently being compiled by R John Croft FCA, the great-nephew of the artist.
In the present work Knight takes as her subject the great Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie (1912-1969). A giant of the sport and integral to the development of figure skating into the sport we know today, Henie is the only female figure skater to have won three consecutive Olympic gold medals, the only skater of any gender to ever win ten consecutive World titles, and one of only two women to win six consecutive European titles (Henie’s record was equalled in 1988 by Katerina Witt). She is credited with popularising white skating boots and shorter skirts for female figure skaters, which allowed them to perform more complicated and athletic jumps and spins and emphasize the elegance of the skater’s extension, and she is also credited as the first figure skater to incorporate choreographic elements into her performances, actually interpreting the music she selected to play while she performed. Following her groundbreaking figure skating career, Henie went on to have a career as a Hollywood actress, performing in fifteen films for 20th Century Fox, almost all of which included skating numbers, and touring the world performing in ice shows which not only popularized the sport with the wider public but also provided less well-known skaters with the opportunity to make a living through their skating. So intrinsically linked is Henie with the sport that her commemorative concrete block in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood includes not only the traditional handprints and signature, but also the impression of her skate blades. Henie was later an art collector as well, and she and her third husband, the shipping magnate Niels Onstad, founded the Henie-Onstad Art Centre in Norway in 1968, the year before her death.
The painting is to be included in the catalogue raisonné of Dame Laura Knight currently being compiled by R John Croft FCA, the great-nephew of the artist.