About the life and work of English actor Esmond Knight

Photograph courtesy of St Dunstan's

Letter to The Times
5th May 1987

"May I add a few words to your comprehensive obituary of Esmond Knight? His first love was indeed the theatre, but the second was painting. This started in a small way when he was almost blind and working at Stratford; a fellow actor suggested he take up drawing.
Most of his paintings were done from memory, and the impression one derives from them is a sense of his experience in the theatre and knowledge of history. In particular his pictures of scenes from the medieval wars between France and England successfully capture the excitement of the conflict. Among his wide-ranging works, two are outstanding; his "Self-portrait" and the "Last impression of HMS Hood viewed from HMS Prince of Wales."

Roland Hardless

It's not entirely surprising that Esmond Knight should have taken up painting as a pastime - the surprising element is that he didn't do it sooner. There were artists on both maternal and paternal sides of his family, most notably his great-uncle, John Buxton Knight (1843-1908), a gifted if somewhat volatile landscape painter whose work hangs in the Tate Gallery, London. Esmond was also a collector of traditional art in a modest way and owned original by Jan Breughel, John Sell Cotman and David Cox.

It was in 1948 when he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-Upon-Avon for a season that he was encouraged to start drawing and painting by his friend and colleague Douglas Wilmer. He used watercolour at first but soon moved on to oils which he found easier, although he continued to use watercolour occasionally, especially for designing Christmas cards. His first notable work was a self-portrait as Christopher Sly in The Taming of the Shrew, waiting in the wings to make his entry.

'Actors preparing for King John at Stratford' - an original painting by
Esmond Knight. Scenes depicting actors in the wings or rehearsing
became a recurrent theme in Esmond's art work.
Picture courtesy of Nigel Martin

For the rest of his life, wherever he lived, Esmond always had a small room converted into a studio, with a larger studio in the attic at Nora's Ark where he could busy himself away between acting commitments. Bearing in mind his limited sight he was remarkably prolific and regularly exhibited his work, notably at the Chelsea Arts Club. He was also very generous in giving away his paintings, as a letter from Laurence Olivier, dated 2nd January 1969, suggests:

Dearest Esmond
Thank you so infinitely much for the lovely painting and so lovely Christmas wishes.
It was so dearly kind of you to think of us. Best wishes for 1969 to you and darling Norah.
I'll be able to give an exhibition of 'Knights' soon.
Always yours
Love
Laurence

Unlike most artists, Esmond was unable to make preparatory sketches and relied entirely on his visual memory for his subjects. When painting a landscape he always started with the sky, deciding how high up the canvas or board the eye line was going to be and using memory to define how light changes as distance increases. "It might be a picture in which the horizon is very, very low. This gives a wonderful feeling of space. Then, if you want to show more, you simply put the horizon up. Then, of course, the stuff in the foreground comes right up to you in the perspective."

A painting by Esmond which was reproduced on Christmas cards in 1967
to help raise money for Moorfields Eye Hospital, London.

Mixing colours in oil - complex enough for perfectly sighted painters - created particular problems. On his palette, colours were laid out in a suitably naval order - red (port) to the left and green (starboard) to the right, with other colours in between and black in the middle. When his already limited sight began to deteriorate in the late 1960s, he relied more and more on others, especially Nora, to identify the shades of colours for him. To give some idea of the problem, Esmond described it thus: "Imagine your left eye is blindfolded. Now close your right eye and open it very gently until the first glimmer of light comes through. That's roughly how much I can see."

"Oil painting is wonderful, particularly if you are painting on board. You make several boss shots and you simply get a rag soaked in turpentine and wash it out and start again, or paint over what you have done and by mistake get a marvellous effect!"

Esmond Knight

Esmond also experimented with other art forms. In the 1950s he was a member of the Chelsea Pottery and Clay Club run by David Rawnsley, an art director who had worked for Powell and Pressburger in the 1940s. Amongst numerous achievements, Rawnsley was responsible for building (out of wood and canvas) the impressive replica U-boat seen during the early scenes of 49th Parallel. He also constructed the remarkable aerial model of Stuttgart in the bombing sequence in One of Our Aircraft is Missing.

On the back of this 1970 painting Esmond wrote: "This is supposed to be old Howe going back to the 'Charlotte' in full mutiny!" He had played Lord Howe in Spithead at the Greenwich Theatre the year before, so presumably a veiled self-portrait.

Of David Rawnsley, Michael Powell wrote: " … the sort of young man that you wanted to be shipwrecked with on a desert island … tall, broad-shouldered, good-looking, considerate of others - in fact, too good to be true."

At Rawnsely's club Esmond tried his hand at three-dimensional art including sculpting in clay. His work there was recorded for posterity in December 1953 by a Pathé News camera team who visited the club and filmed Esmond busy sculpting a finely detailed dragon. He could be seen seated at a bench surrounded by other keen amateurs, including a vicar and a court photographer, all working under the guiding eye of David Rawnsley himself. The narrator of the film was Eamon Andrews who four years later would be surprising Esmond with his big red book as the presenter of This Is Your Life.

"I can't read nowadays, so painting is the only thing I can do when I'm not acting." Esmond in 1970

In May 1973 Esmond had his own exhibition of his paintings at the New Town Gallery in Uckfield, East Sussex, which had recently been taken over by Roland Hardless, an admirer of Esmond's work and Esmond as a person. This was the first exhibition in the new gallery and about seventy paintings were hung. It was a considerable achievement for Esmond - the culmination of two years work, and this at a time when the sight in his good eye was fading. Many people, including friends and colleagues from the theatre, came to see the paintings, and to buy. After three weeks there were only a few left and financially it was a great success for both Esmond and Roland Hardless.

Esmond had specifically asked his family not to organise a memorial service for him when he died. So instead, Nora arranged a posthumous showing of his work that opened on 23rd February 1988 at the Saga Art Gallery in Elystan Street, Chelsea, just across the road from their flat in Cranmer Court. The exhibition consisted of twenty-five studies of archers at Agincourt that reflected both his appearance in the film Henry V and the one-man show he had devised, written and performed triumphantly towards the end of his remarkable career.

An original sketch from a personalised Christmas card sent in 1963

A Merchant of Venice
(signed and dated 1964)

Dunstanburgh Castle, Northumberland
(signed and dated 1967)

Hillock
(signed and dated Christmas 1969)

The Navy's Lion-hearts, The Undismay'd
(signed but not dated)

The following inscription is etched into the back of the frame: "This picture was said to have been painted by Esmond Knight actor and naval officer who was at the Battle of the River Plate (sic) where he lost an eye. The picture was given to me, Tim Mee Power, by my sister-in-law, Katherine Blake, an actress of some note. This was corroborated by my half-brother, Charles Jarrott, film director."

This probably dates the picture to circa 1969 when Esmond was working with Katherine Blake on Anne of the Thousand Days. The film was directed by Charles Jarrott. Blake and Jarrott were married at the time.