John William Buxton Knight
British (1843-1908)
John William Buxton Knight was born in Sevenoaks, Kent, in 1843, the son of the landscape painter, William Knight. Buxton Knight began his art studies at an early age by working in the open air and observing nature. Knight studied at the Royal Academy at the encouragement of the artist Sir Edwin Henry Landseer. Prior to these formal studies he was already an exhibiting painter, having contributed his first canvas to the Academy at the age of 18 in 1861. He continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy throughout his career, as well as in Berlin and Paris.
Knight worked primarily au plein air. “Mr Knight in his nomadic existence is a living protest against convention. The ordinary confinement of a studio would become impossible to a man so devotedly attached to his mistress – Nature. Whatever he does is on the spot and there only. He lives and paints in the open nine months out of the twelve, in all weathers, sunshine or storm, seeing and studying Nature in every visible mood.”
Knight’s work is in the British Museum, Tate Gallery in London, Dublin City Gallery and Southampton City Art Gallery.