Laura Knight: A Panoramic View

 This major exhibition of Dame Laura Knight's work is stunning, well laid out with highly informative and readable descriptions of the major influences and periods of her life. It runs until 20 February at The MK Gallery in Milton Keynes. This was my first visit to the MK Gallery, which although not that close to Swindon, is easily reached by car in 90 minutes. What fabulous gallery spaces, there are 5 large galleries with works divided into early life, painting in Newlyn, Cornwall, some wonderful Pathe footage of Laura Knight where she was dismissively described as stolid. There were paintings from the ballet, circus, gypsy camps, the war, theatre and Malvern. This is how the website describes the exhibition:

'This major exhibition celebrates one of the most popular English artists of the twentieth century, a pioneering painter of performers, war and marginalised communities with a long and successful career that saw her break conventions and achieve many firsts for female artists.

Laura Knight: A Panoramic View presents an in-depth look at Knight’s career, bringing together over 160 works from public and private collections, including iconic works and rarely seen paintings and graphic works as well as designs for ceramics, jewellery and costume.

This highly anticipated exhibition surveys Knight’s career spanning almost a century – from her fascination with the backstage world of ballet and theatre and portraits of people’s every day lives, to depictions of marginalised communities and racial segregation in America. Powerful commissions created as an official war artists during the Second World War will also be on display.

A rare opportunity to see the largest exhibition of Dame Laura Knight in over 50 years at MK Gallery.'

This is the view of the outside of the gallery, which had a £12 million refit and reopened 3 years ago, this Guardian article is quite illuminating. And another Guardian article, the review of the exhibition that first alerted me to it.

I bought the catalogue which has some fabulous photographs of the paintings and some great descriptions of Laura Knight's subject matter and interests. I took a few photos of the interior of the galleries to give an idea of what they are like:

Above some of the fabulous paintings mostly featuring backstage life

The photograph above gives an idea of the size of the galleries

Above there's a series of the gypsy paintings with quotes by Laura Knight about the bodies of the  models; she was particularly attracted to slim, muscular, fit, working bodies.

This portrait above appears to be of a very beautiful woman, it's of Joan Rhodes painted in 1955, Joan was a professional strongwoman and stunt performer, known as 'The Iron Girl in a Velvet Glove'. Her act included bending iron bars with her hands, and 'Although she could tear a telephone book in half by a turn of the wrist, she had no bulgy muscles; her slim bodily form was perfection; as for her head, it was superbly sculptural.

As with so many paintings, in this exhibition there's a fascinating story behind the reason for painting a particular person. If you get the chance to visit in the next 3 weeks, it's well worth the trip to MK Gallery.