Charles Knight

Charles Knight (27 August 1901 – 15 May 1990) was a British landscape painter and stained-glass artist, best remembered for his watercolour paintings of the landscapes of Sussex. His works are in the permanent collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Royal Watercolour Society, Towner Eastbourne and the University of Brighton.

Early life Knight was born on 27 August 1901 in Hove, Sussex, the son of Charles Knight, an accountant to a Brighton publishing company, and his wife, Evelyn (née Nash).

Knight was educated at Stanford Road Junior school and Varndean School. He attended St Bartholomew’s Church, and sang in its choir. both of whom taught him and were later to become colleagues. In 1923, he attained a diploma in art teaching from the college, and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Arts. There, he was inspired by Charles Sims, who taught him his technique of painting in oil over a tempera base, and by Walter Sickert, George Clausen and Glyn Philpot, all of whom taught him. He was particularly influenced by the technique of John Sell Cotman, which influenced several of Knight's early works. In 1922, he was made a member of the Brighton Arts Club In 1926, he began lecturing at the Brighton College of Art, where he would go on to become the acting vice principal in 1959, and the vice principal in 1967, before retiring that same year.

During the Second World War, Knight became a member of the Home Guard as well as a night telephone operator for the Civil Defence, his teaching post keeping him reserved from active service.

After the war, Knight designed several stained-glass windows, including for the parish churches of Seaford (St Leonard), Burwash Weald (St Philip), Eridge Green (Holy Trinity), Hailsham (St Mary), Horsted Keynes (St Giles) and Keymer (St Cosmas and St Damian), as well as St John's Church in Hollington, Hastings, and the Church of the Good Shepherd and St Matthias Church in his native Brighton. In 1946, at St Patrick's Church, Hove, he painted the Stations of the Cross to designs by Louis Ginnett, who had recently died. Another of his local works was the carved representation of Minerva above the entrance to Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School (now Brighton Hove & Sussex Sixth Form College), where he also designed some stained-glass windows. In 1947 he designed the east window above the altar in St Margaret's Church, Ditchling, where he had been worshipping since he moved to the village from Brighton (he was also an altar server and churchwarden at St Margaret's). In the 1950s, his drawings were used in a protest against the construction of a bypass in Ditchling. He also painted railway carriage panels of Knutsford, Crafnant Valley, and Ormskirk, amongst others. He etched at his own printing press in his studio, and was commissioned to work for architect John Leopold Denman,

Personal life Knight married illustrator Leonora Vasey, a fellow art student from Brighton School of Art, in 1934. They settled in Ditchling. Their son was born in 1938. He campaigned for the village green, where the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft was established. Knight was not a member of the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic community set up by Eric Gill, but he was, along with other artists including John Skelton and Frank Brangwyn, part of Ditchling's "arts and crafts ethos".