Dame Laura Knight R.A. (British, 1877-1970), 'Hop Picking', signed l.r., titled on a 1971 Royal Academy label verso, oil on canvas, 75 by 62cm, in the original frame.

Provenance: purchased from the Royal Academy by the current client's parents-in-law. Catalogue Raisonne No.1042.

Note: Artist Resale Rights apply

Note: Laura Knight's love for the countryside and people of Worcestershire led her to create a series of works depicting the gypsy hop pickers at work in the fields at Callow End, between Malvern and Worcester, which she started in 1939, just at the outbreak of WWII. She returned to the theme as a way of softening the effects of the traumatic and disturbing experiences she suffered while painting the Nuremburg Trials in 1946. In her memoirs, Knight records her nostalgic appreciation for the English countryside, made even more poignant in her mind in light of what she had witnessed in Germany, "How lush and green is our meadowland, how dazzling the pear orchards, then white roofed with blossom, how haphazard is our agriculture – oddly shaped, hedged in, dotted with church, cottage, pig-pen and haystack – all calm and sweet as if war had never been and sorrow never was." (Knight, L. 1965, The Magic of Line, p. 302). The impetus to start her studies of hop pickers similarly began with a domestic disturbance as a result of her staff leaving the London home at the outbreak of the war in 1939. "I stayed in Malvern, where to keep myself from going crackers, I painted the nearest thing to hand: the old back garden gate belonging to the hotel, and almost the last rose of summer, anything... no matter what... so long as I didn't stop to think" (Ibid. p.273). As she had always wanted to paint hop pickers, she was alerted to the fields of Callow Farm where gypsies were employed to pick hops during the harvest. She hired a taxi daily to take her to the fields where she would paint canvases directly en plain air "Like painting anything on the move, such as race-meeting crowds, the constant change taking place during the stripping of the hop-vines is nervy work. An artist has to finish as he goes; you cannot reckon on seeing the same thing twice," (Ibid. p.273-274). Amongst the works painted before the war, are included Hop Pickers at Malvern, showing a remarkably similar scene to the current painting, a woman in a pink blouse, man in a cap and a child sitting on a hop cradle looking directly at the viewer (see Sotheby's, 13th December 2005, lot 77). It is likely this painting was executed at the same time.