The Dulwich Picture Gallery will present the first major retrospective of Slade School Artist Winifred Knights, on display from the 8th June until the 18th September.
Examining the career of the first British woman to win the Prix de Rome, this new exhibition will argue that Knights was one of the most original female artists of the first half of the 20th century.
The exhibition will be displayed chronologically, bringing together many of the artist’s most ambitious pieces to highlight the key moments in her career. It will cover many of the important themes in her work such as women’s independence and her experiences of wartime England.
This new display will also feature over 70 preparatory studies, to help provide visitors with an insight into the artist’s working practise as well as large scale paintings that shows Knights’ skill and attention to detail that re-evaluates her importance in the art world.
Sacha Llewellyn, curator of the exhibition said: “Like so many women artists, heralded and appreciated in their own day, she has disappeared into near oblivion. This exhibition, in bringing together a lifetime of work, will create an irrefutable visual argument that she was one of the most talented and striking artists of her generation.”
This new retrospective will begin with the work that she created at the Slade School between the years 1915 to 1920, showing how she developed as an artist. The exhibition will then also look at the work she created during her time at the British School at Rome.
In 1920, she became the first British woman to win the Prix de Rome scholarship in Decorative Painting awarded by the British School at Rome with one of the most enduring images in the history of the competition, The Deluge, 1920.
The display features loans from places including the British Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge and Tate collections.
Winifred Knights (1899-1947)is part of Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Modern British series, a programme of exhibitions devoted to critically neglected Modern British artists. It opens to the public on the 8th June and will be on display until the 18th September. For more information visit: http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/2016/june/winifred-knights/.