Beschreibung:

‡DAME LAURA KNIGHT DBE, RA, RWS (1877-1970) LAMORNA COVE Signed, watercolour and gouache 37.5 x 42.5cm. Provenance: London, The Royal Academy, The Diploma Gallery, 1965, no.119, whereat purchased by Mrs P. Murray; thence by direct descent in Mrs Murray's family. A letter from the artist to Mrs Murray and the cheque (£78.15s) accompanies the lot. The letter in full reads: Dear Mrs Murray Your very kind letter and cheque for £78-15-0 enclosed, has been sent on to me at the above address [Park Hole, Colwall, Nr. Malvern, Worcs.]. I hope you will love `Lamorna Cove` (No119) when it is delivered to you by my agent, Messrs James Bourlet, at the close of the Diploma Gallery on September the twelth [sic] ... where to; The wonderful way in which you speak of my exhibition fills me with joy and encouragement. Although I am now an antique, I hope I have not become just a piece of furniture. With many thanks, yours sincerely, Laura Knight * Following her marriage to Harold Knight in 1903, Laura and her husband moved to the artists' colony of Staithes on the Yorkshire coast. They failed to thrive financially and, after a holiday in Cornwall in 1907, they moved to Newlyn where they settled much more contentedly. They mixed (and shared painting trips) with all the other artists, including Alexander Stanhope Forbes, Ernest and Dod Proctor, Alfred Munnings and Samuel John Lamorna Birch The Knights spent twelve years in Cornwall before moving to London in 1919, but they maintained a happy association with Newlyn during their holidays. In Janet Dunbar's book on Laura Knight (1975), she writes, "The sunlight on this Cornish Coast was unlike anything Laura remembered in Staithes ... it was golden, glowing, turning the blue-green sea into sparkling iridescence... Laura wholeheartedly accepted the tenet of the Newlyn School that outdoor subjects, like landscapes and seascapes, should be faithful transcripts from nature painted from first to last on the spot." The view is from Tregurnow cliff top, above Flagstaff Cottage, looking down into Lamorna Cove. Granite from these cliffs was hauled to London for the building of the Thames Embankment. This early composition for the celebrated oil concentrates upon the glittering light of the water that has filled the cove upon the rise of the tide. "The little bay", Knight recalled, had been "turned to gold by the reflection of the sun shining on the cliff above ...it was an excessively bright canvas". Indeed, the subject was so memorable that it lingered long in Knight's memory, so much so that, during a week of murky fogs in the capital in the winter of 1919-1920, she developed her sketches and her acute visual memory into the stunning exhibit for the Royal Academy that summer (no.618). The challenge was to recall the sparkling and ever-changing colours that had so memorably illuminated the cove. Such was Laura Knight's inspiration that she managed to pin down just enough of the glorious light, sunshine and rippling water on that magical day to recreate the special `ebullient vitality` of the Cornish coast in the dark days of a London winter whilst 300 miles away from the county of Cornwall that she loved so much. The 1965 retrospective exhibition at The Royal Academy was the first such show ever accorded to a female Academician. Knight's autobiography, The Magic of a Line (London 1965), Caroline Fox's Dame Laura Knight (Oxford 1988) and an unframed 1935 print of `Lamorna Cove` (Frost & Reed) accompany this lot (6 items)