Louis Aston Knight Art

Louis Aston Knight 1873-1948 American The Giant Cities–London Signed "Aston Knight" (lower right) Oil on canvas This monumental landscape painting...

Louis Aston Knight 1873-1948 American The Giant Cities–New York Signed "Aston Knight" (lower right) Oil on canvas This monumental landscape painting...

Louis Aston Knight 1873-1948 American Springtime Signed "Aston Knight / Paris" (lower left) Oil on canvas A quintessential landscape scene by Parisian-born American artist Louis Aston Knight, this compelling composition demonstrates the artist's mastery of the genre. Son of legendary landscapist Daniel Ridgway Knight, Aston Knight devoted his life to landscape painting much like his father, maintaining the elder’s ideals of expressing the “true to life” splendors of the natural world. Aston Knight's Springtime is emblematic of this dogma. Here, the artist renders a series of humble countryside shanties built along the banks of a tranquil yet strong river. Though juxtaposed with man-made structures, the composition is a celebration of the river's fortitude and beauty. The water's strong current is a powerful lifeline for the terrain it runs through, cultivating and nourishing a robust natural landscape. Colorful wildflowers spring up along the banks, and thickets of trees and saplings grow along the river's curving edge. Sinuous branches reach out across the water. This composition showcases Knight's signature ability to render reflective water with a level of realism unmatched by his peers. Raised and educated in Europe, Aston Knight was surrounded by artists throughout his youth, including such figures as Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonnier, and gained his first elements of artistic education directly from his father. He later completed his formal artistic studies under the tutelage of the great French Romantic painters Robert Fleury and Jules Lefebvre. Knight's works differed from his father's in that they tended to take a more impressionistic style, a break from the senior’s photographic precision; he also rarely included figures in his works, instead focusing on the landscape's more ephemeral qualities. Despite these key idiosyncrasies, father and son shared an appreciation of nature and man’s role and impact upon it. Though Aston Knight did not visit the United States until he was in his thirties, he was a tremendous success both here and in Europe. His paintings even found favor among American presidents. President Warren G. Harding commissioned a work from Aston Knight for the White House, and his successor, President Calvin Coolidge, held a private exhibition of his works at the famed residence. This particular work was also once housed in a notable estate, the home of prominent Old Western film actor Eugene Iglesias...

A very rare example of his works when he traveled to the south of France. Louis Aston Knight was the son of the American expatriate painter, Daniel Ridgway Knight. In 1873, Louis A...

Impressionist landscape painting of sunset by Louis Aston Knight (1873-1948). Gouache on board, circa 1900. Signed lower right, "Ashton Knight...