Monday 1 August 2016

Leaving the Munition Works, 1919
I've never much cared for Winifred Knights' most famous work The Deluge - I always think it looks like a ballet set. She was acclaimed in her day, then disappeared into the oblivion of Forgotten Women Artists - but she was far from prolific and I came away from the exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery,   her first major retrospective, thinking, 'Is that all?'

Leaving the Munitions Works appealed because I thought of my granny, in her early 20s during WW1, who must have enjoyed her comparatively high wages as a munitionette; her sister was a milliner and they earned very little. I hope granny didn't have to hand over her entire wage packet to her mother.

The Marriage at Cana, 1923
The watermelon slices and the coral necklace caught my eye at The Marriage at Cana.

My picture will be very beautiful. I have drawn 11 plates of melon, pink melon, 9 glasses of wine some empty, partly because they have run out, and 38 people.


The Santissima Trinita, 1924-30
And I do like the way Winifred Knights portrays the Italian landscape in the background to  this painting of sleeping women pilgrims.

But as a body of work it seemed ... slender?

I do like her style, though. Those ballet slippers! They were selling 'Winifred Knights' dresses in the shop, although I can't imagine who on earth goes to a gallery and spends £300-plus impulse-buying a frock they can't try on. Me? I bought a couple of birthday cards.




2 comments:

Cosy Books said...

I'm with you, Mary...admire the dress for a bit and then buy the cards. The trouble is parting with them later! And I do like the term 'slender' to describe a shortfall. Still, the walk through those leafy lanes would have been lovely.

mary said...

Not sure that leafy lanes quite describes the Sunday traffic,Darlene! But it is a nice walk: if rather shocking to see holly berries/elderberry/hips/haws all spelling autumn. Of course, I came home with fingers and shirt stained with mulberry juice from that lovely tree on the lawn.