Laura Johnson was born on 4 August 1877 at Long Eaton, Derbyshire. Her father died when she was young and she was brought up in impoverished circumstances. She was taught to draw and paint by her mother, Charlotte Johnson, who gave private tuition to pupils. At the age of 13, Laura entered the Nottingham School of Art and was probably their youngest ever pupil. The following year, her mother was diagnosed with cancer and died four years later. Laura was awarded the Princess of Wales Scholarship an award of £20 per annum for two years, winning more awards than any other British female art student. In 1900 together with her sister Eva, Laura moved to moved to the artists’ colony at Staithes, a remote fishing community in North Yorkshire. There, in 1903 she married Harold Knight, whom she had met at the Nottingham School of Art. In 1903 Laura first showed at the RA with her Mother and Child No. 1. Towards the end of 1907, the Knights moved to Cornwall, where they remained for ten years. The settled firstly at Newlyn and later moved to Lamorna. Laura Knight developed a close friendship with both Alfred Munnings and with Samuel John Lamorna Birch and his wife ‘Mouse’.  As in Staithes Laura continued to paint children e.g. The Beach 1908; The Boys 1910 and Flying the Kite 1910. The Beach was a transitional work moving away from the less flamboyant painting of the Staithes period. An early example of her use of watercolour and bodycolour was Cheyne Walk 1909 and another example of this delicate painting was the gouache and watercolour Wind and Sun (c. 1913). During the Great War, her husband was a Conscientious Objector and was made to work on the land. After war, the Knights moved to St John’s Wood in London and Laura became increasingly absorbed in the worlds of ballet, theatre and circus. She also explored rural themes. She specialised in combining landscapes and figures, painting nude models out of doors, caused some controversy among the locals, but her charming and lively personality overcame most resistance. Although she had seen performances by the Ballet Russes in London starring Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Kasarvinabefore the war, it was not until the 1920’s that she obtained permission to work backstage. She befriended and painted many of the great ballerinas and ballet dancers of the age. In the same period, she experimented and developed other artistic techniques that included etchings, aquatint, linocuts, woodcuts and Lithographs. She attended the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg, USA with French artist Lucien Simon as European jury representatives for the international exhibition in 1922. She was elected ARA in 1927 and RA in 1936. She was appointed Dame of the Order of the British Empire in 1929, becoming the first woman artist to be thus honoured. Among her sitters for portraits were Anna Pavlova; George Bernard Shaw; Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies; Lubov Tchervichev and Paul Scofield. In the 1930’s she spent much time in the Malverns, receiving invitations to Barry Jackson’s Malvern Festivals and where as his house guest she met authors, playwrights, actors and notables from all walks of life. In the same period, she drew and painted boxers at Blackfriars, painted ceramics dinner sets for Arthur J Wilkinson and Clarice Cliff and began to paint the world of horse racing and gypsies. In 1932 Dame Laura was elected President of Society of Women Artists. During the Second World War she received various commissions via the WAAC e.g. In for repairs (1941), A Balloon site, Coventry (1942), Ruby Loftus (1943), Take Off (1944), Factory Workshops, Land Girls and many others. Dame Laura was commissioned to record the Nuremberg Trials in 1946 and was elected to serve on the Royal Academy Hanging Committee that year. In the post-war years, she found most of her painting subjects in London during the winter months and in the brighter months of the year they stayed at Colwall in the Malverns. In 1956 she was invited backstage in London to draw the Bolshoi Ballet. When Barry Jackson took control of the Stratford on Avon theatre she again became theatrically minded and spent many seasons with him and Scott Sunderland. She travelled widely in Europe and America. After the death of her husband Harold in 1961, her output declined. Dame Laura Knight died on 7 July 1970. Her memorial service was held later that month at St James Church, Piccadilly. Website at http://damelauraknight.com/index.html