Dame Laura Knight, R.A., R.W.S.

Purchased from the Leicester Galleries exhibition in 1918 by Charles Tennant, London;
David Messum, London;
Christie's, 12 June 1998, lot 206;
Richard Green, London;
Private collection

London, Leicester Galleries, 'Camp Life' and Other Pictures by Laura Knight, February 1918, no.16

Caroline Fox, Dame Laura Knight, 1988, illustrated plate.20 as Two Girls on a Cliff

The following condition report has been prepared by Hamish Dewar Ltd, London, SW1Y 6BU: UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structural Condition The canvas is unlined with a perspex backboard and is structurally sound and secure. Paint surface The paint surface has an even if perhaps rather glossy varnish layer and inspection under ultraviolet light shows small scattered retouchings. The most significant of these are retouchings along the upper horizontal and upper left framing edges, the most concentrated of which are on the upper horizontal framing edge and in the upper right corner. There is a vertical line which is approximately 3 cm in length running down into the sky. There are other very small spots and thin lines of minimal retouching. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in very good and stable condition and the only work that might be required is the replacement of the present varnish layers.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

 ‘Fond memory tells of the beauty of line and colour seen daily during the warmer months from my painting hut on the Cornish coast. In a private spot my young friends and hired models swam and dived in the deep pools at low tide or lay in repose on the rocks.’ (Laura Knight, The Magic of Line, 1965, p.140)

 

On a bright summer day, two girls rest on a grassy cliff-top overlooking rocks and oncoming waves. Below them, the sea is foaming as it strikes the rocks and the dramatic movement of the water contrasts with the inactivity of the women who are content to look out to sea and feel the cool breezes on their faces. As Caroline Fox has pointed out, in the years following Knight’s move to Cornwall in 1907 she was greatly inspired by the coastal landscape and the series of pictures depicting; 'female figures, dressed and sitting on the edge of a cliff outlined against the sea, continued to be a popular subject with Laura for many years. These paintings are extremely bright and colourful and reveal her delight in painting the sea in its different moods with shimmering reflections and ripples around the rocks.' (Caroline Fox, Dame Laura Knight, 1988, p.34)

Knight’s favourite painting location was on the rugged cliff-top between the coves at Lamorna, Carn Barges and Portcurno. Here she painted several of her most arresting pictures of sunlight refracted from the ocean including On the Cliffs (sold in these rooms, 17 December 2009, lot 85), Wind and Sun (sold in these rooms, 15 July 2009, lot 69) and The Green Sea, Lamorna. The owner of the land, Colonel Paynter built a small wooden hut for her on the cliffs in which to store her canvases and materials and to offer shelter when the weather was inclement. Around the hut were patches of higher ground used to cultivate daffodils with their riot of spring colour. As she described in her autobiography written in 1936; 'Close by my hut, Carn Bargis [sic] towered. No human hand could have fashioned so architecturally magnificent a pile of granite. On the flat rocks below it were deep pools for swimming and pools in which to paddle. Pinkish fern-like coral, delicate growth of weed, tiny crabs and fish showed clearly in the shallows, as a picture seen through green-tinted glass.' (Laura Knight, Oil Paint and Grease Paint, 1936, p. 191) Every day she would take the footpath that climbed steeply up from Lamorna Cove and followed the edge of the cliffs to resume her painting or sketching. Sometimes she might have the welcome interruption from her work of a fisherman named John Jeffreys who went there to fish for mullet. Once he pointed out the dark shapes of whales moving just beneath the surface of the waves below where they were standing. In the summer friends like Lamorna Birch and his wife would bring their children to swim in the pools below or comb for shells on the beach while Laura made copious drawings of them in the little sketch-books that she kept in the pockets of her cardigan. Laura portrayed herself painting a canvas wedged between rocks whilst a model poses in the foreground and children busy themselves searching for crabs in the rock-pools, in A Summer's Day by the Rock Pool (private collection). She also made sketches of the young women that came there to bathe; 'poised ready to dive, or curving through the air from some great flat rock to plunge into the depths below bordered by a weed fringe, like coarse hair of greenish-brown colour, which curled and uncurled as the water surged and up or receded.' (ibid Knight, p. 191). Always accompanied by her adored and wayward dog Tip, she often saw no-one all day in the cooler months and was entirely absorbed in the natural wonder of the landscape.

The two women depicted in The Green Sea, Lamorna were probably Phyllis Vipond-Crocker and Marjorie Taylor, who regularly posed for Knight in Cornwall. One of the girls had long blonde hair and the other was a short bobbed brunette; their contrasting beauties added to Knight’s aesthetic effect. The same girls appear in The Cornish Coast (Amgueddfa Cymru, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff) and probably also The Cave (offered in these rooms, 17 May 2011, lot 72).

The pictures that Knight painted on the Cornish cliffs were arguably bolder statements and more remarkable than the circus, gypsy and ballet pictures painted later in her career, as they were less reliant on the charm of the subject. Who the women are and what they are doing is of lesser importance as they are merely part of a scene in which nature is the more beautiful and dominant element. These pictures were painted with broad strokes of bright colour worked wet into wet to create expressive impasto. The compositions often took a high vantage looking down towards the sea, the descent interrupted by rocks and figures in the foreground. The days painting in the summer sun were idyllic but it is noticeable that there are no men in these cliff-top pictures as most were across the ocean facing the horrors of war. In her paintings of the Cornish coast Laura Knight defiantly celebrated the glorious British shoreline which, although threatened by invasion by enemy forces remained impenetrable.

In her autobiography Knight referred to pictures of girls on cliffs but was unspecific about the details of the pictures. The series was certainly begun in 1912 following Knight's exhibition at the Royal Academy of Daughters of the Sun (destroyed), a large and ambitious picture of nude girls bathing from the rocks. She continued to be inspired by the theme until 1918 when she and her husband moved to London, although it is possible that she continued to paint these subjects on her regular returns to Cornwall during the next summers. Caroline Fox has dated The Green Sea, Lamorna c.1917 and the boldness of the colouring and dynamic composition is consistent with her mature work in Cornwall. The painting was included in Knight’s exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1918 where it found a ready buyer.