HAROLD KNIGHT R.A., R.O.I., R.P. | A VILLAGE WEDDING

Caroline Fox, Painting in Newlyn, 1900-1930, Penzance, Cornwall, 1985, p. 120, illustrated

Architectural Digest, New York, May 1987, p. 123, illustrated 

Newlyn, Newlyn Art Club, March 25, 1908

London, Royal Academy, 1908, no. 513

London, Royal Academy, 1962, no. 244 

Harold Knight studied at the Académie Julian in Paris under Jean Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. In 1897, he trained at the Nottingham School of Art, where he met Laura Johnson (the future Dame Laura Knight), one of the most accomplished female painters of her age. The two married in 1903 and later became the first husband and wife Academicians in the history of the Royal Academy (Laura admitted in 1936, and Harold in 1937). In 1907, Laura and Harold settled in Cornwall, where they were central to the artistic communities in Lamorna Cove and Newlyn.

A Village Wedding was Knight’s first painting of Newlyn, where the work was first exhibited in 1908. Leaving St. Peter’s Church in Newlyn, the confetti-sprinkled bride and groom are likely from local fishing families. According to their friend Norman Garstin, the move to Cornwall from Staithes, in Yorkshire, precipitated in the work of both husband and wife "an utter change in both their outlook and method: they at once plunged into a riot of brilliant sunshine of opulent color and sensuous gaiety," which is evident in the brightly colored palette of the present work (as quoted in Caroline Fox, Dame Laura Knight, Oxford, 1988, p. 28).