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

Given by the artist to the sitter and thence by descent to the present owners

This cheerful and intimate portrait was painted by an artist who knew the sitter very well, so well that another painting of the same model has become an icon of feminist art, Self Portrait with Nude of 1913 (National Portrait Gallery, London). When Self-portrait with Nude was first exhibited, it caused a scandal because a female artist had never painted herself this way before. When Knight was an art student, women were forbidden to paint live models and by 1913 women's rights remained a topic of heated debate - this was the year that Emily Davison threw herself under the hooves of the King's horse at the Epsom Derby to highlight the Suffrage Movement. Knight's powerful picture also shocked the art establishment because it shows a woman as a skilled professional at work painting a naked model whose body is celebrated but not eroticised. In that picture Ella Naper is arguably anonymous and symbolic, a female body rather than a portrait. Knight regarded Ella's physique as rivalling that of the Rockeby Venus and described her as 'an adorably lovely slim creature' (Barbara C. Morden, Laura Knight - A Life, 2014, p. 122) This recently re-discovered portrait, which has remained in the sitter's family until now, shows the personality of Ella who was a kind and nurturing friend and an inspiring model.

Ella Louise Naper (née Champion 1886-1972) was a skilled painter, enameller, potter and jewellery-maker working in the fashionable Arts and Crafts style. She trained at the Camberwell School of Art in London and later at Branscombe in Devon where she met her future husband Charlie Naper, who was studying to be an artist. In 1910 they married but Charlie was from a distinguished Anglo-Irish family who did not approve of his choice of bride and so the couple decided to move to Cornwall in search of a less conventional way of life. The Napers initially lived in Looe with a summer cabin at Dozmary Pool on Bodmin Moor. In 1913 they moved to the Lamorna Valley and spent much time with the like-minded Laura and Harold Knight who became close friends at Trewoofe (pronounced 'Trove') Orchard at Lamorna. It is tempting to speculate that the present portrait was painted early in the friendship as a token of the bond between the two women, perhaps in 1913 when the Napers' house at Trewoofe was completed.

This picture will be included in the Catalogue Raisonné on the artist's works, currently being compiled by Mr R. John Croft FCA, the artist's great nephew to whom we are grateful for his input in this catalogue entry