Gwendolyn Knight

Life & Legacy

Gwendolyn Clarine Knight (May 26, 1913 – February 18, 2005) was an American artist born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in the West Indies, who later moved to St. Louis and then New York.
Knight painted throughout her life but did not start seriously exhibiting until the 1970s. She then moved to Seattle in 1971 along with her husband. Her first retrospective, "Never Late for Heaven: The Art of Gwen Knight," was put on when she was nearly 90 years old at the Tacoma Art Museum in 2003. Her teachers in the arts included sculptor Augusta Savage (who obtained support for her from the Works Progress Administration) and Jacob Lawrence, whom she married in 1941 and remained married to until his death in 2000. She created mostly portraits and still life art. During the course of her career, she received many awards, including the National Honor Award, and two honorary doctorate degrees, from University of Minnesota and Seattle University.
With her husband, Knight founded the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation in 2000, initially to support the early careers of professional artists. When Lawrence died, Knight disbanded the original foundation and changed her will so that most of the couple's assets went to support children's programs. Today the Foundation's activities are devoted to the maintenance of a website that had been developed in 2000. The U.S. copyright representative for the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.