Laura Knight 1877-1970 - ACE179.2

Dame Laura Knight, interviewed for television in 1970, saying that most people glance but don’t see, and that an artist "looks to see and understand the marvel of the Universe". VO saying that "if you live with a pencil and brush in your hand, you do live life as well as painting it". Waves breaking. Painting of On the Cliffs at Lamorna. Seagulls. Nude from Self-Portrait with Model (1913). Circus performers intercut with circus and gypsy paintings including Gypsy Splendour / Fine Feathers (1939). Take Off – Interior of a Bomber Aircraft (c.1943). Machinery. Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech-Ring (1941). A Balloon Site, Coventry (1943). VO continues saying that she paints "so many aspects of life" because "I just want to". Photographs. Commentary gives basic biographical and career information. Knight VO talking about her family and her mother separating from her father. Caroline Fox, Biographer, talking about Knight’s mother, who taught painting. Knight VO lace-making machinery talking about her grandfather and her family’s increasingly straightened circumstances. Kitchen interior. Fox VO talking about the decline in the lace industry. Knight VO schoolroom talking about being teased for wearing her elder sisters’ clothes. Nottingham Goose Fair. Fox VO talking about the colourful fairground influencing Knight’s later choice of subject matter. Photograph of Knight at Nottingham School of Art; photograph of Harold Knight. Students in studio. Knight VO talking about going to life classes, but, unlike the men, being permitted to draw only heads; women had to draw figures of statues. Fox VO on the results of this policy. Various portrait drawings and paintings (including Dressing the Children, c.1907) based on family subjects, with Knight VO on her mother’s terminal illness, and the poverty the family faced, on living in two rooms with her sister and subsisting mainly on porridge. Fox on Knight’s life at this time. Knight VO talking about paying poor children she found in the street to model for her. Mr Richards talking about his aunt, Nancy Richards,having been given three paintings by Knight to pay off a debt. Fox on Knight’s need to sell her work.