A quieter foil to his ebullient wife Laura, Harold Knight was an equally fine painter. Knitting dates from around 1915, when the Knights were living at Oakhill, St Buryan, near Lamorna in Cornwall. Harold produced a number of sensitive scenes of women in interiors during this period, in part because artists were forbidden to produce views of the Cornish coastline for security reasons during the First World War. Oakhill was also the Knights’ first proper home, converted for the couple by local landowner Colonel Paynter from a row of cottages, and lovingly decorated by them with tasteful objects. Harold Knight had made several journeys to Holland and Knitting reflects the influence of the seventeenth century interiors of Jan Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. Knight employs a cool, subtle range of colours, the silvery tones and the purple of the interior contrasting with the spring green glimpsed through the window. The still life elements, such as the pewter plate on the window-sill and the objects on the desk, are placed with exquisite precision. Knight uses a dancing economy of brushwork to describe the light on the young woman’s face, on her hands and knitting needles, which brings life to the shadowy interior. [Richard Green Fine Paintings, London - Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 45.7 cm]