page_title: Laura Knight
section_title: Second World War
hierarchical_section_title: Laura Knight / Biography / Second World War
caption_attribution_description: English: A young factory worker in blue overalls is shown at work on a industrial lathe, cutting and turning the breech-ring component of a Bofors anti-aircraft gun. Other factory workers are visible in the background.
context_page_description: Dame Laura Knight, DBE RA RWS was an English artist who worked in oils, watercolours, etching, engraving and drypoint. Knight was a painter in the figurative, realist tradition, who embraced English Impressionism. In her long career, Knight was among the most successful and popular painters in Britain. Her success in the male-dominated British art establishment paved the way for greater status and recognition for women artists.
  In 1929 she was created a Dame, and in 1936 became the first woman elected to full membership of the Royal Academy. Her large retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1965 was the first for a woman. Knight was known for painting amidst the world of the theatre and ballet in London, and for being a war artist during the Second World War. She was also greatly interested in, and inspired by, marginalised communities and individuals, including Gypsies and circus performers.
context_section_description: In September 1939 Knight was asked to produce a recruitment poster for the Women's Land Army, WLA. Knight hired two Suffolk Punch horses and a plough from a farmer and painted them outdoors in a cherry orchard on Averills' farm in Worcestershire. Her original design for the WLA poster was rejected for placing too much emphasis on the horses rather than the women working. A new design, with a single woman, was accepted. Knight painted her 1940 Royal Academy entry, January 1940, showing a similar scene at the same time. During the Second World War, Knight was an official war artist, contracted by the War Artists' Advisory Committee on several short-term commissions.
  Among the works Knight produced for these commissions were:
  Corporal J. D. M. Pearson, GC, WAAF (1940) – shows the first woman to receive the Empire Gallantry Medal, Corporal Daphne Pearson of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, WAAF. Although Pearson, at Knight's insistence, sat for the portrait holding a rifle, the finished painting shows her holding a respirator. As WAAF personal were not allowed to carry arms on duty, Knight had to paint over the rifle.
  Corporal J. M. Robins (1940) – Robins was awarded the Military Medal for the courage she showed in assisting the wounded when a shelter was directly hit by a bomb during an attack on RAF Andover. WAAC had requested that Knight paint Robins as part of a group of medal-winning women, but Knight refused.
  In For Repairs (1941) – showing a partly inflated barrage balloon being repaired by members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force at Wythall, near Birmingham. The painting was shown at the Royal Academy in 1941.
  Corporal Elspeth Henderson and Sergeant Helen Turner (1941) – both women were awarded the Military Medal for staying at their post when the building they were in received a direct hit from a bomb during an air raid on RAF Biggin Hill. Although painted in Knight's studio in Malvern, the painting shows the two women on duty at their airfield.
  A Balloon Site, Coventry (1943) – shows a team of women hoisting a barrage balloon into position with the chimneys of industrial Coventry in the background surrounding the spire of Coventry Cathedral. WAAC commissioned the work as a propaganda tool to recruit women for Balloon Command, and Knight's composition succeeds in making the work appear both heroic and glamorous.
  Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring (1943) – in the autumn of 1942 the WAAC commissioned Knight to paint a portrait to bolster female recruitment to the ordnance factories, as the Ministry of Supply were concerned at the level of disaffection and absenteeism among women working in the factories. The resulting painting is one of the largest oil paintings in the entire WAAC collection, and the largest single figure portrait it acquired throughout the war. The painting was first shown on 30 April 1943 at the Royal Academy and the next day was reproduced in eight British newspapers. The painting, along with Knight and Loftus, also featured in a British Paramount News short film shown in cinemas, and was reproduced in a poster version by WAAC. The success of the painting led to further industrial commissions for Knight throughout the 1940s. In 1945 she painted Switch Works at Ellison Switchgear in Birmingham. This was followed by paintings of operations at the Dow Mac concrete railway-sleeper works and at the Skefko ball bearing factory.
  Take Off (1944) – a large and complex group portrait of the four-man crew of a Short Stirling bomber, deep in concentration, preparing for a flight, which Knight painted over several months at RAF Mildenhall. Knight lived in the WAAF Officers' Mess while on the base, and the RAF gave her the use of an obsolete Stirling to work in while preparing the painting. When Knight learned that the navigator in the picture, Raymond Frankish Escreet, had been killed in action, she arranged that his family received a photograph of the painting.
  In total, Knight had seventeen completed paintings, together with numerous studies, accepted by the WAAC, most of which were exhibited in the Nationa
caption: Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring (1943) (Art. IWM LD 2850)
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