Self portrait

Posed with paintbrush in hand, Laura Knight appears here in a spirited and confident self-portrait. She achieved the composition using two mirrors, enabling her to retain a more natural pose as she painted.

At the time, Knight was the foremost female painter in Britain. She was a central figure in Cornwall’s Newlyn School, a thriving artist colony known for using expressive colour, depicting scenes of rural life, and painting en plein air (outdoors).

Because of Knight’s prominence, her self-portrait was considered one of the most important donations to the National Art Gallery in the year it opened. It was described by one critic as ‘a very forceful and vital work’.