Dame Laura Knight

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21938, 12 November 1936, Page 5 (Supplement)

Dame Laura Knight

(Continued from page 4)

smart which was what every little French girl demanded. Poor Laura! Everything about her was wrong from her bunchy figure to her bounding walk. Well, not quite everything. She could draw much better than anyone else and she had her revenge in drawing unbelievably ugly pictures of all Ihe teachers and girls.

Then a blow fell. Word came that her ■ elder sister had died. I.aura was deeply grieved. Within a year she was home again in Nottingham. And she remembered nothing of the homeward journey but that her aunt made her wear a floppy tan o’shanter which was as far as possible from the French ideal chic or smartness. Work at the school of art brought a very good friend, Harold Knight. Laura lived in great happiness fo* > a time, working at her drawing all day long, picking up hints from clever fellow-students and listening to her mother's good advice. Eut it did not last long. At 14 she suddenly found she had to act the part of a capable young woman of 20. Her mother fell ill and for a year lived between life and death with only her two daughters, one a training teacher of 16 and one a student artist of 14. to keep her. All the classes that Mr?

Johnson had taught now had to be taught by the 14 year old Laura. Sometimes her pupils were 14 years old, too; sometimes they were 40. Sometimes Laura had no idea how a thing should be done and had to muddle through* a lesson, perhaps picking up an idea here or there from a pupil. Her mother died; and from that time onwards the 17 year old teacher and the 15 year old artist struggled to make a living. For a time the sister gave up teaching and looked after the rooms while Laura taught. Sometimes for weeks they lived on a diet of porridge and tea. so that the artist looking back refers to such and such a time as a porridge and tea period. Once the diet remained thus for a long time and the sister fell ill; the doctor had to be called and each visit cost ss. Then Laura would sell' a picture frame and things would be better for a time. But then the bad times were over. Laura Johnson was awarded the Princess of Wales’ scholarship of £2O, for two years, for being the woman to hold more awards than any other Englishwoman. Soon afterwards, Harold Knight won a

travelling scholarship. On the smallest of incomes these two hardworking and ambitious artists married in June, 1903. More red-letter days came, of course, but none like the early ones of the scholarships and the first sales. Soon the days were gone when Laura might have to exchange a study done at the school of art for a few hours’ sitting from a model. Gone were the days when she had to persuade children off the street to come to her studio to play at dressing dolls while she painted them, gave them, tea and Id on hour. Now began the successful days leading to the time when Laura Knight travelled round with a circus, painting hard all day in the stables and the dressing room and in the ring and when she sat in the wings and painted ballet girls or theatre audiences. It was not long before her pictures became famous; and not much longer before she won honours as well as prizes from several countries. In 1927 she became an associate of the Royal Academv. giving her the right to use the' initials A.R.A. after her name and the honour of being the fourth woman ever to belong to the Academv. (First, there were Miss Mary Moser and Miss Angelica Kauffman in 1708 as foundation members, and then Mrs Annie Louisa Swynnerton in 1922, an Associate). In 1929 she was given the honour, Dame Commander of the Civil Order of the British Empire, our King Edward VIII.. then the Prince of Wales, conferring the honour in the absence of King George V.. who was ill. And in 1936, she was elected a Royal Academician, the first woman to be so elected. Dame Laura Knight closes her autobiography so: “The world is full of undiscovered beauty—no petty scene but can be glorified in the eyes of him who can see it truly. Above all, I wish that my eyes may be opened and that I may learn to see.”

! A COMPETITION For Girls and Boys of 16 Years and Under Prizes for Crosswords There will be two prizes each week for correct answers to the crossword puzzle on page 3. One prize will be for the first correct answer opened next Tuesday morning (this gives distant readers time to enter), and the other prize will be for the neatest correct answer received. All envelopes should be marked “crossword” so that they will be kept till Tuesday, when they will be put in a box, from which they will be drawn. Every correct entry has a chance of winning the prize. This seems a fair way of arranging the competition for readers who live close at hand and those who live far away. Write your solutions in columns on separate paper; do not send the puzzle itself. And write your choice of a prize with your name and address on the answer paper. The first prize will be either a pocket knife or a set of embroidery threads or paint brushes, and the neatest prize a patent pencil. F. Sandrey, Puriri street, Christchurch, won the cross-word puzzle prize. No one else had every answer correct. The clue for 47 across was pace and the solution was rate. Nearly everyone wrote race as the third letter might have been anything. Now, "What pace is this?” might be “what rate is this?” when you are speaking of speeds. But pace does not mean race. This was a hard word; but

it should be good practice for competitors to work out the clues exactly. Another warning i 3 thfs be very careful to spell aU yoLr answers correctly. Several pme this week through