Dame Laura Knight DBE RA RWS was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition, who embraced English Impressionism. In her long career, Knight was among the most successful and popular painters in Britain. Her success in the male-dominated British art establishment paved the way for greater status and recognition for female artists. In 1929, she was created a Dame, and in 1936 became the third woman elected to full membership of the Royal Academy. Her large retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1965 was the first for a woman. Knight was known for painting amidst the world of the theatre and ballet in London, and for being a war artist during the Second World War. She was also greatly interested in, and inspired by, marginalised communities and individuals, including Romani people and circus performers. Knight worked with Ella Naper, who was experienced in enameling techniques, to produce a set of small enamel pieces featuring several ballet dancers, which were shown at the Fine Art Society in London in 1915. Wartime censorship during the First World War included restrictions on sketching and painting around the British coastline, which caused problems for Knight, particularly when painting Spring. Special painting and sketching permits available after 1915 allowed her to continue her paintings of cliff-top landscapes. These were often depicted as relaxed summer scenes but some of her works, particularly those painted after the start of World War I, of a lone woman on a clifftop staring down at a turbulent sea had a darker undertone. Spring was shown at the Royal Academy in 1916 but later reworked. Several others were completed from studies in the Knights’ first London studio after they moved to the capital in 1919. Also in 1916, Knight received a £300 commission to paint a canvas for the Canadian Government War Records office on the theme of Physical Training in a Camp, and produced a series of paintings of boxing matches at Witley in Surrey. During the war, in 1916, Harold Knight had registered as a conscientious objector and was eventually required to work as a farm labourer. Between 1911 until 1929, Knight drew and painted backstage, some of the most famous ballet dancers of the day from Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Her subjects included Lydia Lopokova, Anna Pavlova and the dance teacher Enrico Cecchetti. Knight also painted backstage, and in the dressing rooms, at several Birmingham Repertory Theatre productions. In 1924 she was commissioned to design the costumes for the ballet Les Roses. After the war, Knight returned to her previous themes of the ballet, the circus and Gypsies, and continued to divide her time between London and Malvern. In 1948, Knight painted backstage at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, mostly observing the work of the wardrobe department, still working under austerity restrictions. That same year, she painted a large group portrait of Princess Elizabeth and several civic dignitaries opening the new Broadgate Centre in Coventry. A period of illness affected her work on this commission, and, despite Knight’s repainting large parts of the canvas, the finished painting was not well received. A major exhibition of more than eighty works by Knight was held at the Ian Nicol Gallery in Glasgow, in 1952. The following year Knight returned to the theatre, painting and producing crayon studies, backstage at the Old Vic in London during the Birmingham Repertory Theatre’s production of Henry IV, Part 1 & Part 2. Throughout this period Knight continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy each year, most notably with a portrait of Jean Rhodes, a professional strong woman known as “The Mighty Mannequin”, which when shown in 1955 led to further portrait commissions for Knight. In 1956, Knight worked backstage at the Royal Opera House during performances and rehearsals by the Bolshoi Ballet. In 1961, Harold Knight died at Colwall; the couple had been married for fifty-eight years. Knight’s second autobiography, The Magic of a Line was published in 1965, to coincide with a major retrospective of her work at the Royal Academy. The exhibition, the first such for a woman at the Academy, contained over 250 works, and was followed in 1968 and 1969 by further retrospective exhibitions at the Upper Grosvenor Galleries. Knight died on 7 July 1970, aged 92, three days before a large exhibition of her work opened at the Nottingham Castle Art Gallery and Museum.