A renowned author, painter, and printmaker, Knight was a central part of the arts community of Lamorna, Cornwall in the 1910s.
Knight was born at Long Eaton, Derbyshire, and raised in Nottingham. She first attended art school near Paris, then in 1890, the Nottingham School of Art, where she met Harold Knight, marrying him in 1903.
After living in the arts colony at Staithes, North Yorkshire, they moved to Cornwall in 1907 and soon made friends with Dod Shaw, Ernest Procter, and the Birch family, amongst many others. She involved herself indefatigibly in the life of the Lamorna art community, and was infamous for painting nude models on the cliffs nearby. She sold the paintings 'Mischief' and 'The Kitten' from the Newlyn Art Gallery in 1910.
Her friendship with the Larmona based Birch family was maintained in correspondence with Lamorna Kerr until her death, and much valued, with Kerr having featured as a model in both Laura and Harold’s Cornish paintings. The Knights were especially close friends of the Napers, the Leaders, the Hughes, the Birches, the Walkes, and Laura was always careful to keep in touch over her long and celebrated life.
Under the tutelage of her friend, Ella Naper, Laura Knight took up enamelling and produced some pieces, inspired by the Russian Ballet, which she first saw in London in 1912. Later, after leaving Cornwall in 1919, the Knights established themselves in London.
During the 1920s and 1930s she became the well known painter of ballet, circus and gypsy life. She worked as a war artist during WWII and was then appointed to record Nuremberg trials in drawings.
