Nine Things You Need To Know....Winifred Knights
From June 8th, Dulwich Picture Gallery will be presenting the first major retrospective of the work of Slade School visionary Winifred Knights (1899-1947). Here's nine things you need to know about this award-winning artist and the show, which is guest-curated by Sacha Llewellyn, a freelance writer and curator, and Director at Liss Llewellyn Fine Art, specialising in figurative art between the wars.
1) Knights’ admiration for the Italian Quattrocento was the inspiration for a highly distinctive and painstakingly executed body of work. The smooth surface, contemplative mood and harmoniously restricted palette of her paintings consciously recall early Renaissance frescoes, adapted to everyday subjects from her own time.
2) Knights’ works are deeply autobiographical: presenting herself as the central protagonist and selecting models from her inner circle, she consistently re-wrote and re-interpreted female figures of fairy-tale and legend, Biblical narrative and Pagan mythology to create documents of her own lived experience.
3) The exhibition will explore significant themes that run throughout Knights’ oeuvre including women’s independence, modernity and her experiences of wartime England. Over 70 preparatory studies will provide a true insight into Knights’ working process, displayed alongside her large-scale paintings to reveal an artist of supreme skill with meticulous attention to detail.
4) Knights attended the Slade School from 1915-16 and 1918-20, four years that would prove definitive in terms of her artistic development. Under the rigorous tuition of Henry Tonks and Philip Wilson Steer, she learnt the importance of meticulous compositional discipline which included the use of scale drawings, full-size sketches and life studies,
5) Early works reflect Knights’ growing awareness of women’s rights, due in part to her close relationship with her aunt Millicent Murby who is sensitively portrayed in the pencil drawing Portrait of Millicent Murby, 1917. A prominent campaigner for women’s emancipation and the right for married women to work, Murby’s writings had a profound influence on Knights’ early compositional work.
6) In 1920 Knights became the first woman to win the Prix de Rome scholarship in Decorative Painting awarded by the British School at Rome with one of the most enduring images in the history of the competition, The Deluge, 1920. Knights was chosen on the insistence of John Singer Sargent.
7) The impact of the five years Knights spent in Italy was the strongest unifying force in her work, fuelling her imagination in works such as Italian Landscape, 1921 and View to the East from the British School at Rome, 1921. She saw Italy as a living landscape that revitalised her creative spirit and as a result she produced some of the most evocative pictures to come out of the British School at Rome: The Marriage at Cana, 1923, Edge of Abruzzi; boat with three people on a lake, 1924-30, and The Santissima Trinita, 1924-30.
8) In 1928 she was awarded a prestigious commission to design an altarpiece for the St. Martin’s chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, on which she worked for five years. The finished piece, Scenes from the Life of Saint Martin of Tours, 1928-33, is profoundly autobiographical, expressing Knights' anguish upon giving birth to a stillborn son in January 1928.
9) When World War II broke out, Knights became distraught and her only concern was for the safety of her son. This brought her already intermittent work to a standstill. She only began working again in 1946, a few months before she died of a brain tumour at the age of 48.
‘Winifred Knights (1899-1947)’ is part of Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Modern British series, a programme of exhibitions devoted to critically neglected Modern British artists.
Winifred Knights (1899-1947)
Exhibition dates: 8 June - 18 September 2016 Tickets: (Pre-book online): £12.50* Adult £11.50* Senior Citizens £7.50* Unemployed, disabled, students FREE children, Friends *Ticket prices include a voluntary Gift-Aid donation
Associated Public Events
Exhibition Lecture: Thursday 9 June 2016 Learn more about Winifred Knights (1899-1947) from the exhibition curator. Exodus In partnership with Dane Hurst and Company 6 – 10 September Tues – Weds (Previews): £20, £15 students Thurs – Sat: £35, £30 Friends/Concessions Dane Hurst and Company return to the Gallery following two sell-out shows last year with Exodus, a new dance based commission inspired by Knight’s work of ‘genius’, The Deluge. Capturing the experiences of the characters depicted in the Deluge and reflecting Knights meticulous working method the piece will trace the movement and narratives of groups captured within The Deluge through individual vignettes to be discovered by the audience throughout the Gallery spaces. The piece will culminate in an apocalyptic climax running down the Gallery’s central enfilade. LATE: Winifred Knights: Forgotten Fashion Icon Friday 8 July 7.30 – 10.30pm £25, £20 Friends, £15 Students (includes a free drink on arrival) An accomplished painter, the first woman to hold the prestigious Rome Scholarship and a style icon, Winifred Knights is an artist forgotten by time. Join the Gallery for a special Late celebrating Knights’ unique painting and fashion style. Enjoy mini-talks on fashion aesthetic with Jane Shrimpton, live catwalks featuring womenswear designs for the Gallery shop by designer Terry Macey and fresh looks by students from Westminster’s MA in Menswear. Get your own creativity flowing with our art-making activity, visit the exhibition and drink up our 1930’s inspired cocktails to the sounds of 30s classics. DISCOVERY DAY: The Renaissance of a Slade Scholar Winifred Knights (1899 – 1947) Sunday 12 June 10.30am – 3.30pm £40, £35 Friends, £25 Students Join us for a unique one-off Discovery Day on that will encompass her life from her years at the Slade School of Fine Art and her evacuation during the First World War through to the time she spent at the British School at Rome in the 1920s and the commissions she worked on in the years leading up to World War II. Tea and Coffee provided on arrival Lunch provided 12.30 – 1.30pm
