Laura Knight (English painter) 1877 - 1970
Pearl Johnson, 1927
watercolour and pastel on board
Collection of Kevin Finch
Knight travelled to America in 1926, to join her husband who was working on a number of portraits for the Johns Hopkins Memorial Hospital in Baltimore. She sought permission to work in the hospital wards which, at that time, were racially segregated, making a group of drawings of black patients. Knight’s interest in this group of sitters was part of a wider fascination in Europe during the 1920s with what was called ‘Negro’ culture, stimulated by the popularity of jazz music. Although some of the patients are named by Knight, nothing further is presently known about them.
During her visit, Knight became increasingly aware of the struggle for racial equality in Maryland. One of her sitters, Pearl Johnson, a hospital secretary, took her to a civil rights lecture and a concert where Knight was the only white person present. Knight’s liberal attitude was nevertheless shaped by her time, and she continued to freely use terms such as ‘picanniny’ and ‘darky’ when naming her works. When she returned to London, she told the Evening Standard that there was ‘a whole world to explore’ in the lives of this group of sitters.le performers, whom she identified as ‘fellow workers’; women whose dedication to their art mirrored her own commitment to painting.
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