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Lot Essay
Laura Knight was largely self-taught, and in consequence had a life-long ability to capture a striking composition. This picture, painted at the height of the Great War, shows her familiar model, Marjorie Taylor, seated against the Cornish coastline, accompanied by Knight’s dog, Tip. Knight has cleverly entitled the work My Lady of the Rocks. Echoing the conventions of the Old Masters, where the Virgin carrying the infant Jesus is often seated in a landscape, here the viewer is presented with a secular Madonna, the embodiment of virtue, on whom to project emotion. Might she be Britannia, defending the cliffs? Or a sweetheart, awaiting soldiers’ return from France? Either way, the heroine appears as strong and imperturbable as the landscape to which she belongs. Soberly dressed, yet chic in the practical fashions of the day, with her sturdy walking boots she exudes vitality and capability. The overcast weather holds no fears for her: she is prepared. With its subtle, veiled, patriotism it is little wonder that the picture was popular with the viewing public when exhibited, and that Knight’s appeal endures.
During the First World War artists were restricted from depicting the coastline, but towards the end of 1915 Laura received a special permit from the government allowing her to do so, and this unleashed a frenzy of activity. As she recalled, she worked en plein air, climbing 'along the cliff edge and over the slippery rocks every day carrying six foot canvases on my head’. Her subjects always included one or two female figures, rarely facing the viewer as here, but always carrying an air of introspection and contemplation. Marjorie Taylor, Tip, and another model, Phyllis Vipond Crocker, can be seen quietly looking out to sea in another work from 1917, The Cornish Coast (National Museum of Wales). Knight worked quickly in bold strokes of colour painted wet onto wet in order to create expressive impasto, to add a vibrancy and immediacy to the paint. As the critic P. G. Konody noted, 'the daring never results in crudeness, and atmospheric relations are by no means disregarded … Mrs Knight while aiming at a certain decorative splendour of vivid colour notes, still remains a Realist … She is a plein air painter, deeply absorbed in effects of light, in reflections, in atmospheric conditions… In now insisting on the substance rather than on the appearance, she only follows the trend of modern art which has become dissatisfied with the limitations imposed by strict adherence in Impressionistic theories, which lead inevitably to dissolution of form and absence of emphatic design’ (quoted in J. Dunbar, Laura Knight, London, 1975, p. 97).
The picture has had an unusual history in the century since it was painted. At some unidentified point between 1946 (the death of St. John Hornby) and its appearance at auction in the 1960s, the picture was partially overpainted to make it more appealing to the market at that time. The black hat was replaced with a red bandana like headscarf, and touches of eyeshadow were applied to the face. In 2002 when the picture appeared at auction at Bonhams it failed to find a buyer (presumably because of its altered appearance) but was later bought by a dealer in 2008 who had the picture x-rayed and restored it to its original appearance. Thankfully, the original paint layer had been preserved intact, and the picture now presents in sound condition, as the artist intended.
We are grateful to Katie Herbert of Penlee House Gallery and Museum, for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné, no. 0221, of the work of Dame Laura Knight currently being prepared by R. John Croft F.C.A., the artist’s great-nephew.
During the First World War artists were restricted from depicting the coastline, but towards the end of 1915 Laura received a special permit from the government allowing her to do so, and this unleashed a frenzy of activity. As she recalled, she worked en plein air, climbing 'along the cliff edge and over the slippery rocks every day carrying six foot canvases on my head’. Her subjects always included one or two female figures, rarely facing the viewer as here, but always carrying an air of introspection and contemplation. Marjorie Taylor, Tip, and another model, Phyllis Vipond Crocker, can be seen quietly looking out to sea in another work from 1917, The Cornish Coast (National Museum of Wales). Knight worked quickly in bold strokes of colour painted wet onto wet in order to create expressive impasto, to add a vibrancy and immediacy to the paint. As the critic P. G. Konody noted, 'the daring never results in crudeness, and atmospheric relations are by no means disregarded … Mrs Knight while aiming at a certain decorative splendour of vivid colour notes, still remains a Realist … She is a plein air painter, deeply absorbed in effects of light, in reflections, in atmospheric conditions… In now insisting on the substance rather than on the appearance, she only follows the trend of modern art which has become dissatisfied with the limitations imposed by strict adherence in Impressionistic theories, which lead inevitably to dissolution of form and absence of emphatic design’ (quoted in J. Dunbar, Laura Knight, London, 1975, p. 97).
The picture has had an unusual history in the century since it was painted. At some unidentified point between 1946 (the death of St. John Hornby) and its appearance at auction in the 1960s, the picture was partially overpainted to make it more appealing to the market at that time. The black hat was replaced with a red bandana like headscarf, and touches of eyeshadow were applied to the face. In 2002 when the picture appeared at auction at Bonhams it failed to find a buyer (presumably because of its altered appearance) but was later bought by a dealer in 2008 who had the picture x-rayed and restored it to its original appearance. Thankfully, the original paint layer had been preserved intact, and the picture now presents in sound condition, as the artist intended.
We are grateful to Katie Herbert of Penlee House Gallery and Museum, for her assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné, no. 0221, of the work of Dame Laura Knight currently being prepared by R. John Croft F.C.A., the artist’s great-nephew.