Laura Knight at the Theatre
Lowry Galleries, until 6 July
Ascot racegoers whose binoculars wandered from the track in 1936 might have spotted something unusual in the car park: a Rolls-Royce with its back door open and an artist working at an easel inside. Odder still, the artist was a woman — Laura Knight — and unlike her friend Munnings she wasn’t painting the horses. Her subjects were the gypsy fortune-tellers who worked the race crowds as alternative tipsters.
In 1936 Dame Laura Knight (1877–1970) was a household name, newly elected as the only woman member of the Royal Academy seven years after being created DBE. Having made her name as a painter of Newlyn beach scenes, Knight had won national popularity with her pictures of the circus and ballet. Unlike Degas, she wasn’t content with anonymous danseuses. From 1919 she obtained permission to work backstage at Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, gaining intimate access to the dressing-rooms of prima ballerinas Lopokova and Pavlova, and catching the stars off guard and en déshabille.
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