Dame Laura Knight

The Gypsy

exhibited 1939

Not on display

Artist: Dame Laura Knight 1877–1970
Medium: Oil paint on canvas
Dimensions: Support: 610 x 406 mm
frame: 810 x 610 x 85 mm
Collection: Tate
Acquisition: Presented by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest 1939
Reference: N05330

Catalogue entry

N05330 THE GIPSY c. 1938–9

Not inscribed.
Canvas, 24×16 (61×40).
Chantrey Purchase from the artist 1939.
Exh: Leicester Galleries, April 1939 (17); R.A., 1940 (566).

The artist wrote (15 November 1957): ‘He, a gentleman called Mr Smith, one wet day, at Iver, Bucks, in the camp there near the railway, posed for me in a little lean-to tent - just a corner in shelter, crowded by a big double bed where an old gipsy and his wife slept. I painted it in 3 or 4 hours. ... I haven't anything more to say about that Mr Smith except that he figures in several other pictures I painted at Iver - one in particular, his whole family which is somewhere in Scotland - wife, three children and his mother, a beautiful old Romany, queen of the camp.’ This was the picture ‘Gipsy Family’ exhibited at the R.A., 1939 (197); repr. Royal Academy Illustrated, 1939, p.58.

Published in:
Mary Chamot, Dennis Farr and Martin Butlin, The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, I