Louis Aston Knight

LOUIS ASTON KNIGHT (Paris, 1873-1948).
"Landscape.
Oil on canvas.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Size: 27.5 x 35 cm; 43.5 x 49 cm (frame).
Louis Aston Knight was the son of the American expatriate artist Daniel Ridgway Knight. Born in Paris in 1873, Louis, unlike his father, had the privilege of growing up in a home where he was surrounded by art and music. Raised and educated in Europe, Louis attended the Chigwell School in England for his Liberal Arts studies and began his artistic training, under the tutelage of his father. He later studied formally with the great French Romantic painters, Robert-Fleury and Jules Lefebvre. In 1894 Aston Knight made his debut at the Paris Salon, beginning a highly acclaimed career. Among his many awards, he won a bronze medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, an honourable mention at the 1901 Paris Salon, a gold medal at Lyon in 1903, a gold medal at Geneva and Nantes in 1904, and gold medals at the Paris Salon in both 1905 and 1906, earning him the title of Hors concours for being the first American to win two gold medals at the Salon in two consecutive years. Knight was also made a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 1924, becoming an Officer in 1928 and finally a Commander in 1934. Louis Aston Knight is most famous for his French landscapes painted in and around his home in Beaumont-le-Roger. Aston admired Claude Monet and visited him from time to time at his house in Giverny. He was particularly impressed by Monet's gardens, and strove to cultivate a garden as beautiful as his. Knight also awarded prizes each year to the neighbouring peasants who maintained the most beautiful gardens. This ensured him good models for his landscape paintings of country houses. Knight gradually became well known on the New York art scene and travelled to the United States on numerous occasions, painting scenes in New York, Florida and California. In 1911 Knoedler and Co. organised an exhibition of his landscapes of the USA and France. His exhibition at the Levy Gallery in New York in 1931 attracted much attention. In fact, "Art News" reviewed the show and described its fame and plein-air approach:A group of new landscapes by Aston Knight, the popular Normandy river landscape painter, is the Levy Gallery's Christmas attraction. Mr Knight sticks to his well-established formula, no doubt due to the tremendous acclaim acquired in his early years, when Hopkinson Smith publicised him as the "painter of the high rubber boots", for Mr Knight was not content to study the action of the Normandy streams from the comfortable banks.... he used to don a pair of waist-high rubber boots and, placing his easel in mid-stream, paint the purulent waters at first hand. Aston Knight was a favourite of the American presidents of his day. In 1922, President Harding bought Aston Knight's painting, The Afterglow, to hang in the White House. Knight even organised a private White House exhibition for President Coolidge during his presidency. Many of his works have received international acclaim and are in art collections around the world, including the Musée du Luxembourg, the Musée des Colonies in Paris, the Toledo Museum of Fine Arts in Toledo, Ohio, and the Delgado Museum in New Orleans.