Sunrise

Details

DAME LAURA KNIGHT, R.A., R.W.S. (BRITISH, 1877-1970)
Sunrise
signed 'Laura Knight' (lower left)
pencil and watercolour on paper
15 ½ x 22 5/8 in. (39.5 x 57.5 cm.)

Exhibited

London, Royal Society of Painters in Watercolour, winter 1934, no. 26.
London, Society of Women Artists, 1955, no. 341.
Worthing, Worthing Art Gallery, Paintings and Drawings by Dame Laura Knight (May 18 - June 15, 1963), no. 72.

Special notice

Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent.

Conditions of sale

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Lot Essay

This misty, dreamlike sunrise can stylistically be dated to the period Knight spent in the Malvern Hills following the Second World War. Knight wrote that she had a ‘rage for painting dawns’ and was particularly interested in the effects of mist at this time (L. Knight, The Magic of a Line, London, 1965, p. 270). The loose handling and lack of figures or detail is typical of watercolours of this post-war period, when she took comfort in vast expanses of landscape and sky, as ‘nature herself blots it out’ (L. Knight, ibid, p. 309).

This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the work of Dame Laura Knight currently being prepared by R. John Croft F.C.A., the artist’s great-nephew.

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