Dame Laura Knight, R.A., R.W.S.

Leicester Galleries, London c.1920;
Sotheby's, 13 May 1987, lot 80;
Crane Kalman Gallery, London where bought by the father of the present owner

Royal Academy, 1920, no.572

STUCTURE This picture is unlined and in excellent condition with strong colours and areas of rich impasto. There are very faint areas of craquelure but this appears to be stable and is only visible upon close inspection. The picture may benefit from a very light clean. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT The varnish appears opaque under UV but there appears to be a small spot of retouching close to the left edge of the picture. FRAME Held in a later moulded frame. Please telephone the department on 020 7293 5718 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

'Fond memory tells of the beauty of line and colour seen daily during the warmer months from my painting hut on the Cornish coast. In a private spot my young friends and hired models swam and dived in the deep pools at low tide or lay in repose on the rocks. How holy is the human body when bare of other than the sun.' (Laura Knight, The Magic of Line, The Autobiography of Laura Knight D.B.E., R.A., 1965, p.140)

In the first two decades following her move to Cornwall in 1907 there was nowhere perceived to be more beautiful and inspiring to Knight than the shore of the ocean at Lamorna and at Carn Barges a little way along the coast. Usually accompanied by her adored and wayward dog Tip, Knight would make her way along the cliff paths to find secret caves and coves, with a little sketchbook tucked away in the pocket of her old cardigan to record the landscape and people that she encountered. Sometimes she might have the welcome interruption from her work of a fisherman named John Jeffreys who went there to fish for mullet. Once he pointed out the dark shapes of whales moving just beneath the surface of the waves below where they were standing. In the summer friends like Lamorna Birch and his wife would bring their children to swim in the ocean or comb for shells on the beach while Laura made copious drawings of them. Laura portrayed herself painting a canvas wedged between rocks whilst a model poses in the foreground and children busy themselves searching for crabs in the rock-pools, in A Summer's Day by the Rock Pool (private collection). She also painted the local girls that also frequented the sheltered coves and bays along the coast at Lamorna; 'poised ready to dive, or curving through the air from some great flat rock to plunge into the depths below bordered by a weed fringe, like coarse hair of greenish-brown colour, which curled and uncurled as the water surged and up or receded.' (Laura Knight, Oil Paint and Grease Paint, 1936,p. 191). The Cave was one of Knight's last depictions of the Cornish coast, painted after her move to London and accompanied a depiction of Lamorna Cove at the Royal Academy of 1920.

The Cave depicts two young girls who have taken themselves to a secluded cove and while away the rest of the day beside the sea. The girl with long blonde hair has been swimming naked in the clear waters and is now standing on a large boulder, her pale wet body bathed in the light of in the midday summer sun. She lifts a towel above her head as she dries her arms and adopts a stance that suggests that she is neither self-conscious or unaware of being observed. Her younger companion, with a fashionable cropped haircut and navy-blue bathing-costume, smiles warmly at the viewer. As a female artist, Knight had the ability to enter the secluded worlds inhabited only by women and like her scenes of dancers behind stage at the ballet, she was able to capture an intimacy that her male counterparts were rarely allowed to witness at such close quarters. She sat at the edge of these worlds which were not her own and observed the naturalistic activities of the girls, recorded their movements and gestures faithfully, without eroticizing or dramatizing their actions. These girls are not sea-nymphs or the type of bathers painted by French artists, they are real girls not yet conscious of their own bodies. The people of Lamorna eventually became used to Mrs Knight and her naked female models, although it was seen as less acceptable for her to paint naked male bathers - two elderly ladies visiting from Penzance were shocked to find the artist painting a naked man on the rocks where they had intended to hold a picnic to commemorate an event of their youth. The disgruntled women complained to the local squire, Colonel Paynter, who being of open mind declared; 'Laura Knight can do what she likes - that piece of shore is my private property.' (ibid Knight, 1965, p.142) 

The contrast of the shadowed and imposing walls of the sea-cave and the brightly sunlit cove, beautifully captures the heat of the summer day. The flash of bright green, where the rocks at the back of the cave are covered by mosses thriving in the dampness, relieves the background of what might otherwise be a swathe of shadows and recesses. The pale bodies of the girls are radiant against the darkness of the cove. Knight wrote of the contrast between the figures and their surroundings; 'Their bare flesh showed, amber or purple - rich against pale rock or water and pearl pink against dark shadow or the blackness of some deep gully.'  (ibid Knight, 1936, p.191). The models that posed for The Cave were favourites of Laura Knight and also appear in Two Girls on a Cliff (Christie's, 12 June 1998, lot 206) and By the Shore (Christie's, 12 March 1993, lot 31) both painted in 1917. One of the girls may be the one recalled fondly by Knight in 1936; 'I remember a young girl, her torso as if carved in black shining marble, the wet bathing-suit clinging close round her lovely breasts accentuated the modelling.' (ibid Knight, 1936, p.191)

The Cave was among the pictures of girls swimming off the rocks at Lamorna that were exhibited at the Leicester Galleries in London and was seen by Colonel Mayes, the head of Physical Training for the Colonial Forces who had an office on Oxford Street. Seeing the paintings of athletic young women, he exclaimed; '"Who is that girl/ I must have her to train - is she really like that? are her insteps really so flexible?" etc., etc. I assured him all was as true as I could make it. He would make of her the Example of Feminine Physical Perfection for the Whole world - his wife would take care of her - she should receive big money right from the beginning.' (ibid Knight, 1936, p.217). Although she did not want to be deprived her as a model, Knight was delighted that her young friend, named Marjorie, was 'discovered' in this way.