Sachi Yanari-Rizzo, Research Curator
Through a donation followed by an opportune auction purchase, the FWMoA will be able to exhibit Daniel Ridgway Knight and his son Louis Aston Knight side by side in the future. Although the elder did not encourage his son to become an artist, both became successful plein air painters while living in France.
Daniel Ridgway Knight grew up in a strict Quaker household in Philadelphia. No artwork could be found in the family home, but secretly, the young boy made drawings after engravings at the Franklin Library. Through the support of his grandfather, who recognized his talent, Ridgway Knight enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1858 and studied there for nearly three years. He took classes, drawing from live models and plaster casts of antique sculptures, which was a course of study modeled after European academies. Mary Cassatt and Thomas Eakins were among his classmates.
Likely encouraged by French student Lucien Crépon, Ridgway Knight traveled to Paris and studied there from 1861 to 1863. He received a traditional, academic foundation in painting at the École des Beaux-Arts under Alexandre Cabanel and at Swiss-born Charles Gleyre’s atelier, where he befriended future Impressionists Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley.
Ridgway Knight felt the call to return home as the American Civil War battle heightened. He enlisted in 1863 in a Pennsylvania regiment and served through the remainder of the war, recording key events in his sketchbook.
Returning to France newly married, Ridgway Knight found his way to Poissy, 15 miles west of Paris in the countryside where history painter Jean Louis Ernest Meissonier lived. Meissonier became a good friend and mentor.
Ridgway Knight never returned to the U.S. but sent works back for exhibitions. He regularly exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The venerable Paris Salon accepted 36 oil paintings and watercolors between 1873 and 1921, and he received an honorable mention and gold medal. Sales of Ridgway Knight’s work were continual. A writer declared, “Rarely have any of his pictures been exhibited except at the Paris Salon, owing to the fact that most of his larger canvases have been sold as soon as exhibited at the Salon, and many of his minor works have been engaged before they were finished.”[1]
In 1874, he and his friends took a trip to paint outdoors in the hamlet of Barbizon that had been frequented by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, and Jean-François Millet, whom they visited. Ridgway Knight’s love for open air painting became evident when he built studios made of glass in Poissy and later Rolleboise. This enabled him to work in natural light even in inclement weather.
While his former classmates were challenging academic traditions with broken brushstrokes and high key colors characteristic of Impressionism, Ridgway Knight shared an affinity with the tightly painted works of the Naturalists, drawing comparisons with Frenchmen Jules Breton and Jules Bastien-Lepage. Like them, in 1874, Ridgway Knight’s subject matter shifted to peasants and shepherds engaged in everyday activities.
Ridgway Knight began painting in the small village of Rolleboise, around 1896, while maintaining a home in Poissy. Later, Rolleboise became a choice painting location for Post Impressionists Maximilien Luce and Albert Marquet. His rustic summer home was located 25 miles northwest of Poissy, even further removed from Paris. Ridgway Knight’s social entertaining decreased as the house lacked electricity and running water, but young artists seeking advice still paid him visits.
It appears that Ridgway Knight developed close relationships with his peasant models. Art historian George Sheldon wrote about Ridgway Knight in 1888: “A hundred times he has been called upon to act as godfather to the children of his models and, whenever one of them gets married, she is sure to receive from Mr. Knight a handsome present in gold.”[1]
While Barbizon artist Millet’s images of peasants presented unromanticized views of rural labor, Ridgway Knight didn’t focus on physical hardship. He explained, “The peasants are as happy and content as any similar class in the world. They all save money and are small capitalists and investors. They enjoy life. They work hard, to be sure, but plenty of people do that. They love their native soil.”[2]
Through the years, Ridgway Knight simplified his compositions by centering on a single female figure. In Among the Flowers, Rolleboise (Girl with Rake) of 1904, he catches his model lost in thought as she takes a break from working in the artist’s garden. Ridgway Knight visually reinforced the connection between the peasant and earth as her frayed work clothes are in blues and greens that align with the colors of the natural setting. Sitting partway up the hillside, the artist’s house was renowned for its bountiful flower gardens and scenic view along the Seine River. As he became elderly, Ridgway Knight spent more time in Paris. He was able to work up to the last months of his life.
Born in Paris, Louis Aston Knight grew up in a more artistically friendly environment than his father’s childhood home. Ridgway Knight provided some instruction, and the two spent painting trips together in Normandy and Brittany. Aston Knight’s son recalled that father and son came to agreement about the subject matter in their works. Ridgway Knight’s paintings would be figurative and Aston Knight’s pure landscapes.
Aston Knight received his formal education at the Académie Julian under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Tony Robert-Fleury. He received the bronze medal at the Exposition Universelle, Paris in 1900 and exhibited six works at the Paris Salon between 1897 and 1899.
The artist enjoyed capturing the nature of water, whether it was a puddle or stream. A 1907 Scribner’s Magazine article described him as “The Man in the High-Water Boots,” as the artist would wade in the Risle River with his canvas and ladder to study the water.[3]
In 1919, Aston Knight and his family purchased a Louix XIII manor in Beaumont-le-Roger with lush gardens. He built a thatched cottage on the grounds, known as “Diane’s Cottage,” the subject of countless works and probably named for his daughter. The artist stated, “’I continue to paint and repaint it, not out of habit or because of its success, but because I am convinced that until now I have not succeeded in capturing its great charm and beauty.’”[4] Aston Knight explored the site from different vantage points and under various weather conditions and times of day. In Summer Sunlight: Diane’s Cottage, the cottage overflows with the season’s flowers in garden beds and clay pots along the windows. Even the pathway is overgrown with long grasses described with feathery strokes.
Modernism did not influence Aston Knight’s painting style. He commented, “’I see no reason for such art. Nature is beautiful enough to inspire masterpieces to those who are willing to copy it and to give to others the poetical effect nature expresses.’”[5]
Some sources suggest that Aston Knight met Impressionist painter Claude Monet in Beaumont-le-Roger and visited Giverny with its legendary gardens several times. Aston Knight took pride in his and the neighbors’ flower gardens, offering a monetary incentive in the form of an annual $1,000 prize for the “Flowering Cottage” competition in the village. This provided him with plentiful subjects as well.
During WWII Aston Knight and his family relocated to New York. His beloved home in Beaumont-le-Roger was destroyed by the American Air Force. Not long afterwards the artist suffered a stroke. He passed away three years later—24 years after his father’s death on the same date.
To see more works from the permanent collection, plan your next visit to FWMoA today!
[1] George Sheldon, Recent Ideals of American Art (New York and London: D. Appleton & Co., 1889), 27, https://archive.org/details/frick-31072002552851/page/n49/mode/2up.
[1]Harold T. Lawrence, “Daniel Ridgway Knight, Painter,” Brush and Pencil VII, no. 4 (January 1901): 203.
[2] Ridgway Brewster Knight, “Ridgway Knight: A Master of the Pastoral Genre,” in Pamela Beecher, A Pastoral Landscape: Paintings and Drawings by the American Artists Ridgway Knight and Aston Knight (Ithaca, NY: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 1989).
[3] Ridgway Brewster Knight, “Aston Knight: Expressing the Poetry of Nature,” in Pamela Beecher, A Pastoral Landscape: Paintings and Drawings by the American Artists Ridgway Knight and Aston Knight (Ithaca, NY: Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, 1989).
[4] Beaumont-le-Roger, “Louis Aston Knight, an American who fell in love with Beaumont le Roger.” https://www.beaumont-le-roger.fr/je-visite/personnalites/louis-aston-knight/.
[5] Knight, “Ridgway Knight: A Master of the Pastoral Genre.”