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A photograph of Carn Barges today, on the western side of Lamorna Cove
Laura Knight 1877-1970
Carn Barges, 1935
Oil on canvas
63.5 x 76.2cm (25 x 30ins.)
Framed: 81.0 x 93.8cm (31 7/8 x 36 15/16ins.)
Framed: 81.0 x 93.8cm (31 7/8 x 36 15/16ins.)
Available to buy
Further images
Provenance
Sold by the Executors of the artist's Estate, Sotheby's, London, 26 November 1970, lot 99.
With Julian Simon Fine Art.
Anon. sale, Sotheby's & Stephan Welz, Johannesburg, 2 November 1992, lot 314 (as Cliffs on the coast).
Private collection, UK.
Exhibitions
London, Royal Academy, 1935, no. 275. Carn Bargis [sic]
Publications
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition Catalogue 1935, p. 25, no. 275 Carn Bargis [sic]
Online catalogue of Laura Knight's work, under cat. no. 0163.
Laura Knight, Oil Paint and Grease Paint, London, 1936, p. 191.
Laura Knight’s favourite haunt was the rugged coastline to the west and east of Lamorna Cove, where she painted some of her most arresting studies of sunlight and colour refracted across the sea, including At the Edge of the Cliff (1917) and The Green Sea, Lamorna (c. 1917). Colonel Paynter, then owner of Lamorna Cove, was so supportive of Knight that he built a small wooden hut for her on the cliffs, providing somewhere to store her canvases and shelter while she worked.
Knight herself recalled the extraordinary setting in her autobiography, Oil Paint and Grease Paint (1936):
“Close by my hut, Carn Bargis [sic] towered. No human hand could have fashioned so architecturally magnificent a pile of granite. On the flat rocks below it were deep pools for swimming and pools in which to paddle. Pinkish fern-like coral, delicate growth of weed, tiny crabs and fish showed clearly in the shallows, as a picture seen through green-tinted glass.”
It was with considerable excitement, therefore, that we recently went in search of Knight’s “magnificent pile of granite”. We found Carn Barges just to the west of Lamorna Cove, remarkably little changed despite having endured a century of the prevailing south-westerly storms. We have attached a photograph of the site for comparison.
Standing there, it became clear that another important work by Knight, On the Cliffs (1913), was also painted at Carn Barges, viewed from the Lamorna Cove side. The discovery adds an especially interesting dimension to Carn Barges, placing the painting within a very specific and important location in Knight’s Lamorna practice.