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Showing posts from September, 2020

Winifred Knights: art in service of the vision of equality.

 'Self-portrait' by Winifred Knights. I first consciously encountered Winifred Knights in 2016 when the Dulwich Picture Gallery hosted a wonderful exhibition. One of the benefits of such exhibitions is that they provide the occasion for the accompanying catalogue or monograph: a publisher can take the risk! The curator of that exhibition, Sacha Llewellyn, produced a highly sensitive, beautifully produced study, 'Winifred Knights' that I have been reading (and looking at).  Her first love was people in nature, people engaged in the harmonious business of living within a traditional landscape. She was a product of that moment at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century when a recognition of what was being lost in industrialization and urbanization was coming to the fore; and, that recognition was balanced between a realistic appraisal/critique and a sepia-tinged nostalgia.  One of the formative influences on her was Edward Carpenter, somewhat lost