Aston Knight: Expressing the Poetry of Nature

Louis Aston Knight (son of the celebrated painter of French peasant life Daniel Ridgway Knight) was born in Paris on August 3, 1873. Aston Knight as he was known, followed in his father’s footsteps and painted in France and the United States until the middle of the twentieth century. He achieved considerable artistic acclaim and popularity in his own name, thus imitating his procreator in a more unusual fashion. Indeed, the achievement of both professional and financial success by two succeeding generations of artists is exceptional.

Aston Knight rejected the tenets of modernism and identification with any school. Instead, he chose to paint in strong brush strokes the poetry of nature around him. One day, when asked his opinion about cubism, he responded: “I can see no reason for such art. Nature is beautiful enough to inspire masterpieces to those who are willing to copy it and to give to others the poetical effect nature expresses.

He found his favorite subjects in the rushing, crystal clear streams of Normandy, as well as in the movement, flow, and reflections of water everywhere in mountain torrents, alongside a ship at sea or merely in the glistening rain puddles of a city square. It is, therefore, no surprise that some critics should have acclaimed him as unexcelled in his treatment of water in all its moods.

Early on he and his father realized that there should be a basic distinction between their respective artwork. They reached an informal understanding: Ridgway Knight always introduced one or more figures in his landscapes, whereas Aston Knight never placed figures in his scenes. The artists also differed in their talents. The father, grounded in drawing and precision by his early masters, usually painted with exquisite attention to detail, sometimes using a large magnifying glass attached to the end of a long hinged wooden arm; the son, more impulsive, preferred bolder brush strokes and, when painting for himself rather than for future buyers, expressed himself in an openly impressionistic manner.

Aston Knight grew up in the Chateau de Poissy, fifteen miles west of Paris, next door to Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonnier, his father’s early mentor and later close friend. His comfortable and hospitable home was always full of visitors, friends, fellow artists, and art lovers, including would-be customers. Although young Louis, as his family and friends always Recognition came early. Aston Knight received a bronze medal at the Paris World Fair of 1900, followed by an honorable mention at the Paris Salon of 1901. Then, in quick succession, he earned gold medals of honor at Rheims, Cherbourg, Lyons, Geneva, and Nantes. In 1905 he was awarded the third gold medal of the Paris Salon for his painting The Torrent, which was acquired by the Toledo Museum but is now lost. Reproductions of this work show a rushing, swelling river swirling around reeds and rising over the bank as it ate away the side of the cliff in the background. His second gold medal, earned at the following year’s Salon with the Giant Cities, made him “hors-concours”5 (the first gold medal is reserved by statute for a French artist). By that time, as a result of his numerous awards and critical acclaim, many of his pictures had been bought by American collectors.

During those early years, before he was married, Aston Knight spent much of his time on a boat on the Seine River. He bought an ancient, bluff-bowed, Dutch yacht in Holland and sailed it up and down the Seine with a crew of fellow artists, sketching by day and raising hell at night. A quarter of a century later, when rowing down the Seine with wife and sons Ridgway and George, many villagers still remembered “Monsieur Louis” and the pranks he and his friends had played on them. Rolleboise was his home port, and when not in use the old Sans-Gi’ne was moored at the family dock beneath the famous all-glass studio.

Although English was the language of his childhood home and he had been brought up very much as an American, Aston Knight did not travel to the United States until 1905. At that time he painted New York City and its skyscrapers for the American panel of his large triptych The Giant Cities. Describing the painting, a critic noted:

The great cities are New York, London and Paris, each occupying a panel. It is evident that the artist was more anxious to paint the water of the cities than any other part of them, for the Thames, the Seine and the North River take up the most important part of the foreground of each city. Since he relished painting water, it was not surprising that he used this element to connect the foreground of the three cities in his composition.

On October 15, 1907, Aston Knight married Caroline Ridgway Brewster, a distant cousin from Rochester, New York. She had been traveling in Europe with her mother, and they had spent their last few weeks at Beaumont-le-Roger, entertained by the young artist whose mill was nearby. Just before they were to return to America, he asked for her hand. After Caroline accepted, he sailed back home with the mother and daughter. The wedding took place in Somerville, New Jersey, in the home of the bride’s sister, who had married the future senator Joseph Frelinghuysen. They spent their honeymoon at Niagara Falls, where the groom painted a view of the cataract that he intended for a Paris Salon.

Thereafter the painter and his family made regular trips to the United States to visit relatives and exhibit his paintings. At first he held annual exhibitions at Knoedler Galleries in New York City, where his father had shown for many years. Later he exhibited frequently at the John Levy Gallery, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 57th Street in New York City. The Knights later maintained an apartment in that city and traveled extensively in the United States, the artist painting and sketching wherever he went.

Until the outbreak of World War I the couple lived in Paris and toured widely in Europe. They spent every September in Venice, a city that provided Aston Knight with ample opportunity to paint glimmering, sunlit water effects. In works such as Tile Rio Sant’ Aponol, the movement of light across the buildings and the canal animates the scene. Another of his works, Venice, was entered in the Paris Salon of 1910. The dark foreground of a doorway and the pattern of ironwork in the arch contrast strongly with the bright sunlight on the canal beyond. Aston Knight’s attention to the decorative patterns of the architecture suggests his sensitive appreciation of the Venetian structure.

Between his marriage and World War I Aston Knight began to favor the thatched cottages and flowers beside the gently flowing streams of his Normandy home. These works were well received by American critics and sold readily, a financial consideration of some importance for a young married man. At the same time he continued to paint cityscapes and scenes from his travels.

During World War I the Knights lived in the United States, where Aston Knight painted many canvases of his beloved Normandy from memory. The Knights traveled to Maine, upstate New York, and South Carolina, and they spent winters in Florida. He depicted a few war scenes, which he sold for the benefit of the French Red Cross. In 1915 he donated one of his Venetian paintings, Rio Orginasante, Venice, to an exhibition at Knoedler Galleries. The works in the show were sold at an auction and the proceeds were given to the families of French soldier-artists.”

The family returned to France in 1919. A year later Aston Knight purchased a country home at Beaumont-le-Roger, a brick and white-stone Louis XIII manor built by Francois Mansard. (See fig. 7.) The artist planted beautiful gardens, which he used as subjects for his paintings. Within the grounds he built a cottage, using the timbers of three old Norman structures that he had bought. He was thus able to have at his disposal three different facades to inspire him in his paintings. The cottage, which he never tired of depicting in every light, was the source of the series known as “Diane’s Cottage". It represented the charm of the pastoral ideal- rustic abode nestled among a profusion of flowers beside a running brook.

Aston Knight knew Claude Monet, admired his painting, and visited him from time to time in Giverny, which was only thirty miles away. He also was impressed by the gardens that the old painter had created. After a few years and by the time of Monet’s death in 1926, Aston Knight’s garden had become as well known as the master’s. Every summer day, visitors would ring the bell in the high brick and white-stone wall that separated the street from the courtyard and ask for permission to visit.

Practical as well as artistic, Aston Knight offered yearly prizes totaling $1000, a generous amount at the time, for the three cottages surrounded by the loveliest flower gardens. By encouraging the neighboring peasants to cultivate their grounds, the painter generated new cottage landscapes to paint. But during World War II tragedy struck the idealized rustic setting the artist had created with such love and care. In August 1944, as General Patton had effected his break-through near Avranches, the American Air Force destroyed the house, Diane’s cottage, and the studios in a massive bombing operation intended to cut off the Germans’ retreat by destroying the bridges across the Risle.

Many of Aston Knight’s garden works are in “A Pastoral Legacy: Paintings and Drawings by the American Artists Ridgway Knight and Aston Knight,” and his son George Knight clearly remembers events from his childhood in those environs. Spinghouse depicts one side of Diane’s cottage, where bottles of champagne and beer were chilled in the cold spring water and served after a vigorous game of tennis.’0 The painting Laundry Houses along tile Risle depicts the spot where the women of Beaumont went to the river to wash their clothes.” In 1922 Aston Knight’s river scenes of France achieved further popularity in the United States when President Harding purchased one, The Afterglow’, for the White House. The entire lower third of the canvas is nothing but water, brimming with movement and light.

Paintings such as Vannes and View of the Seine indicate the artist’s desire to seek out the most picturesque views of other areas of France. The turrets and steeples of Vannes are reminders of the medieval history of the region, described with broken impressionistic brushwork that adds to the ruinous appearance of the foreground structure. The latter painting shows a view of a bustling river, and the brilliant green rolling banks of the countryside provide a barrier between the viewer and the ancient seaport city on its hill. Aston Knight was fond of including ruins and buildings in his scenes, and one critic noted, “The rustic landscape in countries long under cultivation is the type in which he is seen at his best. “Ruined Mill at Sunset” is a good example of his affinity for such picturesque ruins integrated into a landscape.

During the 1920s Aston Knight held several exhibitions of his work, including a private showing for President Coolidge at the White House. Among the pictures exhibited were Dutch Canals at Dordrecht and views of Venice. Still, public interest continued to center on his Normandy paintings, which continued to bring him praise as a painter of water. “Some people call it fairyland and some paradise,” Aston Knight explained about Beaumont-le-Roger as it appeared in his paintings. “It is the most beautiful spot in the world.”

Probably reflecting his childhood memories, Aston Knight echoed in his Beaumont home much of what he had experienced as a boy in Poissy. He had the same hospitable, open house, with good cooking and excellent wine. As the house happened to be on the road from Cherbourg, where most of the Europe-bound ocean liners moored, friends from America would stop by for a meal or for the night on their way to Paris. Other friends and acquaintances would drive out from the city; consequently, the house was full most of the time. Occasionally, a young, struggling artist would find a warmly hospitable and restoring welcome at “Manoir de Chanterelle-the Manor of the Singing Frog."

In 1930 Aston Knight and his family made their first trip to California. While staying at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, he depicted a view of the city from his window. He traveled up and down the coast, painting views as well as gardens of private homes. When he saw the Monterey Peninsula, he took up residence in nearby Carmel and painted the rocky beaches along 17 Mile Drive. He found studies of nature as stimulating as ever, noting: “It was intended for a pleasure trip but it turned out to be the most successful business one. I sold twenty of my landscapes in California."

Aston Knight visited Jamaica in 1936, where he painted daily and earned much favorable critical comment for his use of color and broad brushwork. Later he returned to the United States and toured the Midwest, showing his work at museums and galleries; constantly professing that one should paint “nature as it is.” His landscape views of America in the 1930s employ more impressionistic brushwork. He once declared “that the tree is the finest feature of the American landscape,” and that “often when painting some of the grand old Connecticut trees, the thought had come to him how Harpignies or Corot would have loved that tree."

During the 1930s, while their daughter was at school in the United States, the Knights spent only three months of the year in ~ The Depression years had little effect on the artist’s ability to sell his work. He showed frequently, and his ties with patrons were strong.
After the fall of France in June 1940 the Knights returned to their apartment in New York City, where they remained until their deaths. The Manoir de Chantereine, Diane’s cottage, and the studios lay in ruins; it was out of the question to rebuild a complex of such architectural and natural beauty, put together by little touches over so many years. Shortly after learning of the destruction of his beloved French home, Aston Knight had a stroke. Although he continued to paint occasion-ally, his work revealed an abnormal use of the color blue. Three years later, in 1948, he died, virtually twenty-four years to the day after his famous father.

Aston Knight had sought out, and met, the difficult challenge of establishing his own identity in the shadow of a highly successful father. Further proof can be found in the numerous decorations he received. After making him a knight of the Legion of Honor in 1924, the French government promoted him to officer in 1927 and finally to commander in 1934, in addition to awarding him three other medals. Other decorations included the cordon of grand officer of the Dragon of Annam, the Ouissam Alaouite of Morocco, the Etoile Noire of Benin, and the Honneur et Patrie of Haiti. Like his father, he was active in the affairs of the American community in France, and he was elected the first chairman of the European chapter of the American Artist’s Professional League.

Aston Knight’s paintings of white water curling over rocks and filling the foreground, such as in A Yorkshire Stream, remains his most exciting work. The cropping of that composition and its severe focus on the stone masses reflect admiration for the work of Courbet. His less well-known city scenes show a fine sense of light playing over a wide range of architectural and urban motifs. However, Aston Knight always preferred painting the world of nature as he saw it - in all its beauty, with its flowers, trees, and cottages reflected in the ever-present swirling water.

1887 Entered Chigwell School, Essex, England
1890 Painting trip to Brittany with his father
1891-98 Studied at Academie Julian under Lefebvre and Tony Robert-Fleury
1894 Started exhibiting at the Paris Salon
1900 Bronze medal, Paris World Fair
1901 Honorable mention, The Thames at Whitechurch, Paris Salon
1903 Third gold medal, Lyons Exposition
1904 Gold medals in Geneva and Nantes
1905 Third gold medal, The Torrent, Paris Salon
1906 Second gold medal, The Giant Cities, which made him “hors concours” at the Paris Salon
(the first gold medal is reserved for a Frenchman).
Became first American landscape painter to receive two Paris Salon gold medals in two consecutive years
1907 Married Caroline R. Brewster in Somerville, New Jersey
1907-13 Took annual trips to Venice in the fall 
1910 Held exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Rochester
 The Garden Gate, Venice (Palais Venetian), Paris Salon
1911 Trees, Paris Salon traveled to New York City
1911-13 Visited England extensively
1913 Torrent an Pays de Calles, Volney Exhibition Traveled to New York City
1914 Traveled and exhibited through out the United States
Came to the United States to live and paint until the end of the war
Returned to France
Bought estate at Beaumont-le Roger
1924 Knighted in the French Legion of Honor
1919 Returned to France
1920 Brought estate at Beaumont-le-Roger