Daniel Ridgway Knight Paintings |
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Daniel Ridgway Knight BiographyAmerican Naturalist painterborn 1839 - died 1924 Student of: Alexandre Cabanel (1823-1889), Charles Gleyre (1808-1874), Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899). Father of: Louis Aston Knight (1873-1948). |
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Daniel Ridgway Knight paintings represent so many aspects of Nineteenth Century painting, including history, genre, landscape, portrait, and floral themes. In each painting, all that is aesthetic is recorded with fine detail and skill. In order to faithfully record the scenery, Daniel Ridgway Knight studied the different phases of the day and their effects on the environment. Knight built a glass studio outside of his home, enabling him to paint outdoors, even in the dead of winter. Whether he was concentrating on the evening with the glow of moonlight upon the Seine River or on a young woman in a brightly colored flower garden at midday, each scene is depicted with great detail and with specific attention to a realistic portrayal of the landscape. |
Daniel Ridgway Knight was born on March 15,1839 in Pennsylvania. He studied and exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art, were Daniel Ridgway Knight was a classmate of Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins. In 1861, he went to Paris to study at l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts under Cabanel, and to apprentice in the atelier of Charles Gleyre. He returned to Philadelphia in 1863 to serve in the Union Army. During the war, Knight practiced sketching facial expressions and capturing human emotion in Daniel Ridgway Knight painting. He sketched battle scenes, recording the war for history. He founded the Philadelphia Sketch Club, where he showed paintings that dealt with the Civil War, mythology, and scenes from opera. In 1871 Knight married Rebecca Morris Webster and after the wedding he began working as a portrait painter in order to make enough money to return to France. | |||||||
In 1872, once settled in France, Knight befriended Renoir, Sisley, and Wordsworth, all of whose influences can be seen in his work. He also enjoyed a close relationship with Meissonier. In 1875 a Daniel Ridgway Knight painting was painted and called Wash Day (35.5 ” x 51.25 ”) after a sketch by Meissonier for which he received critical acclaim. He was also strongly effected by the paintings of Jean-Francois Millet. In 1874 while painting in Barbizon, Knight went to visit Millet and found his view of peasant life to be too fatalistic. As opposed to Millet, Knight focused on depicting the rural classes during their happier moments. Other important influences were Bastien-Lepage, with whom he is most often compared and Jules Breton for his plein-air style. |
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Daniel Ridgway Knight paintings during the 1870’s and 1880’s focused on the peasant at work in the field’s or doing the day’s chores - collecting water or washing clothes at the riverside. His painting Hailing the Ferry, painted in 1888 and currently in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Art, depicts two peasant girls calling for the ferryman on the other side of the river. This painting, considered one of the artist’s masterpieces, captures all the elements of his pre-Rolleboise period - the subdued light and color, the finely detailed figures and the artist’s acute attention to detail.
By the late 1890’s, Knight established a home in Rolleboise, some forty miles west of Paris. Here he began to paint the scenes that were to make his painting so sought after by contemporary collectors - views of his garden. His home had a beautiful garden terrace that overlooked the Seine - a view often used in Daniel Ridgway Knight paintings. Collectors from across the globe vied for these paintings, which featured pretty local girls in his garden. paintings from this period include The Roses currently in the collection of the J.B. Speed Museum and The Letter in the Joslyn Art Museum - both of which feature pretty young women surrounded by lush flora. |
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