Introduction

A Brief History of the Project

The idea for this catalogue raisonné took shape in the 1980s when Howard Rehs, then a young art historian and gallerist, began selling works by the Daniel Ridgway Knight. Over the next ten years, he watched the prices of Knight’s paintings rise consistently. In the early 1990s when he started working on the catalogue raisonné for the 19th-century French painter Julien Dupré, Rehs uncovered material about Knight as well. When Knoedler Gallery agreed to open its archives for him, he had access to all of their records, including thousands of auction catalogues and sales ledgers as well as old photographs from the time when Knight’s work was frequently in their inventory. This provided a solid foundation for what would become the catalogue raisonné.

During the early stages, Rehs met several descendants of the artist who provided him with information about Knight’s life and work. Eventually, he hired art historical researchers to identify material about the artist in French archives and museums. By 2015, when I joined the project, Knight’s place in the art historical canon had become more secure.

In researching the life and work of Daniel Ridgway Knight, it became apparent that the modest amount of existing scholarly investigation of his career was based on two substantive articles written during the artist’s lifetime. The earliest of these is Theodore Child’s article for The Art Amateur from April 1885, which claims that “Mr. Knight hails from Philadelphia, where he was born in 1842 of an old Quaker family.”[1] In fact, the artist was born in 1839 and was baptized, married and buried in the Episcopal church. A 1901 article by Harold T. Lawrence in Brush and Pencil perpetuated this falsehood and embellished it even further, writing that “A ban was placed under the parental roof on pictures and music.”[2] He then described how Knight “fostered his love of art in secret by copying pen and ink engravings from books he borrowed from the Franklin Institute Library.”[3] The tale becomes even more melodramatic in recounting how Knight’s schoolmates distributed his drawings to local art dealers and his kindly grandfather took pity on Daniel and persuaded the boy’s “stern Quaker father” to let his son study art. How or why these stories originated cannot be determined at this point, but they have been repeated consistently in the art historical literature. This catalogue raisonné endeavors to anchor Knight’s biography in documented primary sources. A number of questions remain, and those gaps in the historical records are indicated when they occur in the hope that future scholars will continue to fill in information if it becomes available.

Most of my research was conducted in France where Knight lived from 1872 until his death in 1924, with only two notable breaks, one in the mid-1890s when he returned to Philadelphia briefly and the other during World War I when hostilities required him to return to the US. Investigating an American artist working almost exclusively in France posed some singular conditions on art historical research. There are not many records in the US simply because Knight did not live there for long, and the records that exist in France are incomplete. The non-French students who attended the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, for example, are scheduled to be catalogued by the National Archives only after the records for all French students are completed. Likewise, the Legion of Honor Museum does not keep dossiers on non-French members. Public records are more reliable. Census records and property transactions are available and complete as are the actes civil, which contain birth, marriage and death notices. Church records and the extensive database of Salon records are also abundant and available.

Acknowledgements

Art historical research always depends on the myriad individuals who share their knowledge of resources, logistics and scholarly information. I was fortunate to find a fellow nineteenth-century specialist in Madeleine Fidell-Beaufort, Professor Emerita, American University, Paris. I cannot thank her enough for sharing many references and articles as well as crucial information about American artists in Paris during the nineteenth century, some of which proved key to resolving conflicting information about Daniel Ridgway Knight’s career. Likewise, I am indebted to art historian William Hauptman, who generously answered questions about Knight’s years in Charles Gleyre’s studio. At the Church of the Holy Trinity, American Cathedral of Paris, archivist Kate Thweatt introduced me to resources about the extraordinary community of American artists who worshipped and socialized there throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. A major thank you is also due to Dr. Gabriel P. Weisberg and Yvonne Weisberg who introduced me to the Galerie De Bayser in Paris, and provided me with an initial introduction to the literature on Daniel Ridgway Knight.

As always, gratitude is due to the librarians, archivists and public officials who make research possible. This project would have been sadly incomplete without the guidance of Romain Dugast, Chef de Service aux Publics, Direction des archives départementales des Yvelines, who directed me to both the Ancien département de la Seine et Oise for the historical census records and the Archives du cadastre for documents about historic property transactions. At the Musée National de la Légion d’Honneur in Paris, Mme. Minjollet not only explained that there are no dossiers on American recipients of the Légion d’Honneur award, but went to the trouble of finding the answer to my questions about Daniel Ridgway Knight’s award regardless. Thanks are also owed to the librarians and archivists at the Custodia Foundation, the Institut national d’histoire et de l’art, the Bibliothèque et la Documentation at the Musée d’Orsay, and the Terra Foundation Library.

Daniel Ridgway Knight’s descendants have been welcome participants in this project as well. I am deeply indebted to Sara E. Knight for her unflagging willingness to share information, documents and photographs of her ancestors; and to Sara M. Knight for generously examining and sharing her files on the painters in the family. Cameron Knight deserves a special mention as well for initiating contact with Rehs Galleries and introducing me to his cousin Sara. Bill Knight also provided encourgement in the early days of the catalogue raisonné research. They have all enriched this project immeasurably. In France, I owe a special thanks to historian Paul Busuttil, who traced the French members of the Knight family and kindly put me in touch with Sophie Seguin who related many of the stories about Charles Knight; Nadine Marboeuf also shared her childhood memories of her grandfather, Charles Knight.

Janet Whitmore, Ph.D.

[1] Theodore Child, “Daniel Ridgway Knight”, The Art Amateur, April 1885, Vol. 12. No. 5: pp. 101-106

[2] Harold T. Lawrence, “Daniel Ridgway Knight, Painter”, Brush and Pencil, Vol. VII, No. 4. (January 1901) pp. 193-207.

[3] Ibid. p. 195.