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Daniel Ridgway Knight | |
| Birth Date: March 15, 1839 |
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| Death Date: March 9, 1924 Artist Gallery |
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| Daniel Ridgeway Knight was one of the top plein-air genre and figure painters of his time. Born into a strict Quaker home in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Knight was groomed to work in a local hardware store. Nevertheless, he obtained permission to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for two years with fellow students Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, and Everett Shinn. Knight sailed for France in 1861 to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. In 1863, as the Civil War grew closer to Philadelphia, Knight returned home to enlist. It took him eight years to earn enough money to get back to France.
In France, his studio was next to that of painter Steinheil, the brother-in-law of painter Jean Louis Messionier. In 1874, Knight arranged to do some sketching in the village of Poissy, less than an hour from Paris by rail, where he worked under the guidance of Meissonier. Many of the artists working at this time were intent on capturing the effects of outdoor light, but they did not necessarily paint outside, as the Impressionists did.
The Parisian Art and Artists in 1883 wrote, “Knight has built in the garden attached to his house at Poissy a studio of glass, like an ordinary hothouse. Here the artist can work in all weathers except the warmest. In the winter with the snow upon the ground, he is able to sit comfortable and finish pictures commenced in the summer, posing the model in a diffused light similar to that in which he had begun by a country roadside.”
Knight held a dual allegiance to the land of his birth and to France. But he remained in France for the rest of his life, raising two sons – the architect, Charles Knight and the painter, L. Aston Knight.
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