Portrait of Jane Kelly by Dame Laura Knight, RA

Laura Knight, R.A. (1877-1970)

Portrait of a Lady, possibly Lilian Jelly, or Lilian Ryan, Lady ‘Jane’ Kelly

Signed and dated l.r.: Laura Knight/Dec 1923, watercolour and black chalk

Provenance

Private collection, U.K.

Exhibited

MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, ‘Laura Knight a panoramic view’, 2021, ill. p. 144;

Nottingham Castle Museum, ‘Laura Knight & Caroline Walker: A Female Gaze’, 2021 (no catalogue)

Literature

Ed. Fay Blanchard & Anthony Spira, ‘Laura Knight A panoramic view’, 2022, ill. p. 144

This striking work by Laura Knight was drawn in 1923 and is a notable example of her ‘female gaze’. Her portrait drawings of women are invariably strong and vital. Here she adds emphasis by the choice of her trademark black chalk creating strong lines which contrast with the vivid blue watercolour of the background.

It has been suggested that the sitter Lilian Ryan, who was married to Sir Gerald Festus Kelly, one of the most fashionable society portraitists in Britain during the first half of the twentieth century and president of the Royal Academy in London between 1949 and 1954. As a result, during Kelly’s tenure as President, Lilian ‘Jane’ Ryan, as she was more commonly known, exhibited under the alias ‘Lilian Jelly’ to avoid her husband being accused of cronyism.

From a working-class family, Ryan (c.1898 – c.1980) had been a model for Sir George Clausen in the 1910s and it was he who introduced her to Gerald Kelly in 1916. They were to marry four years later and spend over fifty happy years together; indeed, Gerald painted her portrait at least fifty times, exhibiting each year’s edition at the Royal Academy and titling them ‘Jane’ - his nickname for his wife. Her many likenesses became so recognisable that when Queen Mary was introduced to her, she exclaimed "Jane, of the many Janes!".

Lilian took an interest in painting for herself in the early 1940s and her husband encouraged her curiosity. She had a natural affinity to oils and she advanced quickly and exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1944, continuing to exhibit there for thirty years.

In 1936 Laura Knight was the first woman to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy since its foundation in 1768. She battled against the structural inequalities of the art world throughout her professional life, from the time she was excluded from the life room at Nottingham School of Art in 1891. In 1922 she wrote a pamphlet entitled ‘Can Women Succeed as Artists’ where she identified inequality of opportunity as a major factor in the near exclusion of women from the arts in Britain. In 1937 she became the first woman to join the selection committee of the R.A. but she was not invited to its annual banquet until 1967.

Knight campaigned for greater recognition and status for women in the arts throughout her career and was President of the Society of Women Artists from 1932-1968. Throughout her life she took the opportunity to promote herself and her work, to fight for equal renumeration and to obtain high-profile commissions.

Dimensions

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance