Winifred Knights retrospective at Dulwich Picture Gallery

Santissima Trinita

A protégé of the Slade School of Art during WWI, in 1920 Winifred Knights won the most prestigious art scholarship of the era, affording her three years of painting study with the British School at Rome. The other shortlisted candidates were all men and a newspaper headlined her triumph: 'Girl, 21, wins prize.'

Knights's early ambitions tended towards illustration, but she followed in a family tradition of determined social activism and feminism, and she turned to creating much larger works inspired by utopian visions of mankind in harmony with nature.

Despite turning her back on Christianity at age 15, when her baby brother died, she was profoundly moved by mythical and historic Biblical narratives. Characteristically, female figures predominate in her paintings and social vision. Her scholarship work The Deluge evokes the trauma of the Great War at least as much as it represents the Biblical story of Noah.

A celebrated artist in her own lifetime, Winifred Knights never held an exhibition of her work and her memory has been eclipsed by that of her husband and fellow artist, Thomas Monnington.

This is the first major retrospective staged since her untimely death from an undiagnosed brain tumour at the age of 48. It contains finished works and studies that have not been seen together since they were created.

Knights's style reflects the Slade traditions of clean draughtsmanship and purity of form and composition, with an emphasis on figure drawing. Her oil paintings are luminous, worked with very thin layers of paint to create an ethereal effect.

She was influenced by modern painters, particularly Stanley Spencer, but also followed the processes of the Renaissance masters, as was noted by her critics. Comparing the work of Knights to that of Leonardo da Vinci, the artist DY Cameron wondered "if she dreams similar dreams of spiritual loveliness?"

The Santissima Trinita (1924-1930), above, represents female pilgrims resting at the Italian shrine above the town of Vallepietra. It combines Knights's compassion and love for rural landscape and the peasants within it, and, typically, includes a representation of herself. "One might be in Paradise," she wrote of the idealised community that she sought and found in the Italian countryside.

Winifred Knights (1899 - 1947) opened today (8 June) and runs to 7th September 2016 at Dulwich Picture Gallery.

For more information see: www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk