Winifred Knights

Winifred Margaret Knights (5 June 1899 – 7 February 1947) was a British painter. Amongst her most notable works are The Marriage at Cana produced for the British School at Rome, which is now in the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and her winning Rome Scholarship entry The Deluge, which is now held by Tate Britain. Knights' style was much influenced by the Italian Quattrocento and she was one of several British artists who participated in a revival of religious imagery in the 1920s, while retaining some elements of a modernist style.

Biography Winifred Knights was born in the South London suburb of Streatham, the eldest of four children of Mabel, née Murby, a former theatrical singer and embroiderer, and Walter, the secretary of a sugar plantation company. From 1912, Knights attended James Allen's Girls' School in Dulwich where she showed an early artistic talent, winning both gold and silver medals with the Royal Drawing Society in 1915. This became the subject of her 1918 painting The Potato Harvest.

At the end of the War, returning to the Slade, Knights began to draw upon personal themes to inspire her work including war and peace, town and country and the social status of men and women. In 1919, Knights painted Leaving the Munitions Works and, jointly, won the Slade Summer Composition Prize for A Scene in a Village Street with Mill-hands Conversing featuring a figure of a female trade unionist.

Knights remained in Rome until 1925. The relationship with Mason ended and she married fellow Rome Scholar Thomas Monnington on 23 April 1924. Her first major work in Rome, The Marriage at Cana, was completed in 1923. The painting toured internationally before being relegated to storage at the Tate and then later to an inaccessible stairwell in the British School's London office. Due to its large size, British public collections, including the Tate and Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, did not accept offers to add the painting to their permanent collections. Eventually in 1958, the painting was gifted from the British School in Rome to the National Art Gallery of New Zealand. Monnington was awarded several high-profile commissions which Knights assisted him with, both by posing as a model and by preparing and painting parts of the finished works. The cathedral authorities did not appreciate Knights' slow, careful approach to the work and she was inconsolable when the triptych was relegated to the crypt of the church. It has since been restored to the body of the cathedral.

The Deluge

To compete for the Rome Scholarship students were asked to paint a scene of The Deluge, in oil or tempera measuring 6 X 5 feet and which had to be completed in a period of eight weeks (commencing 5 July). The panel of ten judges included George Clausen, John Singer Sargent, Philip Wilson Steer, and David Young Cameron. Knights' depiction of the deluge went through several versions, including a foreground scene of Noah and his family loading the animals onto the Ark. However, as time ran out Knights was forced to simplify her composition with people fleeing the rising waters and escaping to higher ground, Noah's Ark can be seen in the distance to the right. Knight's mother modelled for the central figure carrying a baby and her then partner Arnold Mason modelled the male figure beside her and the man scrambling up the hill. Knights portrayed herself as the figure to the centre right of the foreground. The Flood water was modelled on Clapham Common. The Deluge was shown in the British Pavilion at the Paris Exhibition of 1925.

Dress Knights was known for her distinctive dress, a stylised version of nineteenth century Italian peasant costume, characterised by a loose ankle-length skirt, a plain buttoned blouse, a wide brimmed black hat and coral necklace and earrings. Several of Knights's paintings include self-portraits, including The Deluge and The Marriage at Cana. Knights can be seen in the foreground of The Deluge and is the third figure on the left hand side, seated at the table in The Marriage at Cana. In both paintings Knights depicts herself wearing distinctive dress.