Lot 290
DAME LAURA KNIGHT D.B.E., R.A., R.W.S. (BRITISH 1877-1970) §
DANCERS
Auction: 10 October 2018 at 11:00 BST
Description
Etching and aquatint, signed
28cm x 23cm (11in x 9in)
Footnote
Note: Dame Laura Knight was one of the most distinguished and popular female artists working in 20th century Britain. Knight was made a Dame in 1929 and in 1936 became the first woman to be awarded full membership to the Royal Academy of Arts highlighting her pioneering role in raising awareness and respect for future women artists. Knight's artistic career was exceptional from the beginning, she joined the Nottingham School of Art at the young age of thirteen where she went on to specialise in the figurative, realist tradition; a testament to her innate artistic talent as up until 1893 female students were not allowed to draw nude models from life.
Knight worked in a range of media including oils, watercolours, engraving and etching and is celebrated for giving an insight into the lives of individuals who lived on the fringes of society such as circus performers and ballet dancers. This collection of etchings showcases Knight's unique ability to gain the trust of these communities which facilitated her immersive working method that often involved Knight living alongside the individuals she drew. The etching Zebras shows how Knight documented the popular leisure activities of the early twentieth century, in this case by spending an intensive period of four months travelling around the country with Bertram Mills's circus recording the lives of itinerant circus performers.
As well as popular entertainment, Knight also engaged with cutting edge performances in the art world; the drypoint etching Make Up is a portrait of Lubov Tchernicheva, the prima ballerina in the Ballet Russes's debut matinée peformance of Cleopatra at the London Colisseum. Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russes was instrumental in introducing European modernism to Britain and captured the imagination of many artists with Coco Chanel and Pablo Picasso designing costumes and French avant garde artists like Henri Matisse designing the set productions. However, instead of focusing on the drama of the performances themselves Knight was permitted backstage access to capture the unseen and private lives of the dancers. In Knight's autobiography Oil Paint and Grease Paint she highlights just how privileged she was recalling that ''No outsider but myself then haunted the stage''. This etching reveals the close relationship Knight shared with the performers; here she observes Tchernicheva carefully applying khol eyeliner for her role as Cleopatra in which she wore an Egyptian headdress designed by Sonia Delaunay. Knight stated 'there was to be no conversation; it was to be as if I did not exist' and it was this unobtrusive approach which enabled Knight to capture such quiet contemplative moments and that gives her etchings their intimate appeal.