A museum in Penzance, Cornwall, is to host a major exhibition to celebrate the life and career of one of Britain’s most prolific 20th century artists.

Penlee House Gallery and Museum will host the Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) exhibition to celebrate a painter and artist whose career spanned 80 years.

Dame Laura was known for the huge variety of subjects, techniques and styles she used. She was only the second ever woman to be accepted to the Royal Academy and a highly acclaimed war artist who showed the reality of war on the home front during the Second World War.

Laura Knight: A Celebration will be an overview of her entire career and genres beginning with her early years, the flowering of her work in Cornwall before the First World War, through her portraiture and on to her later years painting the Gypsy dynasties in Malvern.

Sophia Weston, Trustee of the Garfield  Weston Foundation, which has made the exhibition possible through its support, said: “The Weston Loan Programme  exists to bring important loans to regional organisations, and we are so pleased to be able to support the display of these artworks in Cornwall, especially as this includes one of Knight’s most well-known pieces on loan from the Imperial War Museum’s collection.”

Created by the Garfield Weston Foundation and Art Fund, the Weston Loan Programme is the first ever UK-wide funding scheme to enable smaller and  local authority museums to borrow works of art and artefacts from national collections.

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Bringing together over seventy works by the artist, the exhibition will include paintings from private collections not seen for many years, alongside some of Knight’s most famous paintings such as Ruby Loftus Screwing a Breech Ring from the Imperial War Museums, The Cornish Coast from National Museum Wales and portrait of classical pianist Ethel Bartlett from the Atkinson Art  Gallery.

Laura Knight: A Celebration will be on display at Penlee House Gallery and Museum from May 17 to September 16, 2021.

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