The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (253 page)

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1698–1778).
English portrait painter, a pupil of
Richardson
. He was in Italy 1725–32 and in 1736 he became official painter to the Society of Dilettanti, of which he was a Foundation Member. His twenty-three portraits of his fellow members (still in the possession of the Society) are considered his finest works. From about 1737 Knapton worked much in pastels, but after the 1750s he appears to have virtually given up painting. In 1765 he was appointed Keeper of the King's Pictures.
Cotes
was his most important pupil.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Knave of Diamonds
or Jack of Diamonds
(Bubnovyi Valet).

An artists' association and exhibition group formed in Moscow in 1909 that for a short time became the most important of the avant-garde associations in Russia. In 1911
Larionov
,
Goncharova
, and
Malevich
broke away from the group, accusing it of being too dominated by the ‘cheap orientalism of the Paris School’ and the ‘Munich decadence’, and founded their own association, the
Donkey's Tail
, to promote an art based upon native Russian inspiration. The Knave of Diamonds continued to hold regular exhibitions until 1916, and then broke up.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1646–1723).
German-born painter who settled in England and became the leading portraitist there in the late 17th cent. and early 18th cent. He studied in Amsterdam under
Bol
, a pupil of
Rembrandt
, and later in Italy, before moving to England, probably in the mid 1670s. The opportune death of serious rivals (notably
Lely
in 1680) and his own arrogant self-assurance enabled him to establish himself as the dominant court and society painter by the beginning of the reign of James II (1685). He was appointed Principal Painter jointly with
Riley
on the accession of William III and Mary II in 1689 (becoming sole bearer of the title when Riley died in 1691), was knighted in 1692, and created a baronet in 1715. Kneller established a work-shop-studio in London with a large team of specialized assistants, many of them foreign, organized for the mass production of fashionable portraits. Sitters were required to pose only for a drawing of the face and efficient formulas were worked out for the accessories. He is said sometimes to have accommodated as many as fourteen sitters in a day. The average portrait turned out from his studio in this way was slick and mechanical (and the heavy wigs then fashionable make for great monotony in male portraits), but Kneller was capable of work of much higher quality when he had a sitter to whom he especially responded; outstanding examples are
The Chinese Convert
(Kensington Palace, London, 1687) and
Matthew Prior
(Trinity Coll., Cambridge, 1700). Many other examples of his work, including the portraits of the
Kit-Cat
Club, are in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His style was less elegant and more forthright than Lely's. but the influence of his mass-produced work was stultifying. He was the last foreign-born artist to dominate English painting, but it needed a
Hogarth
and a
Reynolds
to break through the conventions that he had popularized.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

Knight , Dame Laura
(née Johnson
,

1877–1970).
English painter. In the first half of the century she was one of the most highly regarded of British artists and in 1936 she became the first woman to be elected a
Royal Academician
since the original women members Angelica
Kauffmann
and Mary
Moser
. At the height of her considerable fame (she was regarded as a ‘character’—the nearest equivalent to a female Augustus
John
) she won great popularity for her colourful scenes of circus life and the ballet, but these now often seem to hover close to kitsch. On the other hand, her early
Newlyn School
landscapes, which at their best have a sparkling sense of
joie de vivre
, have recently come back into favour. Some of the work she did as an
Official War Artist
during the Second World War is also now highly regarded. In 1946 she went to Nuremberg to make a pictorial record of the War Criminals' Trial; she made scores of sketches and produced a large painting (Imperial War Museum, London). Her husband
Harold Knight
(1874–1961) was also a painter, mainly of portraits.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search