KNOWLAND, Dennis

Dennis Knowland (1918-1985) practised art while at Dulwich College and Frensham Heights. Aged 16 he met R O Dunlop, who encouraged the use of a palette knife. In 1935 he spent a year at Chelsea School of Art, taught by Graham Sutherland and Robert Medley, winning a prize for landscape. From 1936–40 Knowland worked in advertising, painting on Sundays, aged 18 showing The Lane, Kenwood, Hampstead, with the LG. During World War II Army service in Scotland Anne Redpath lent him a studio, and he continued to paint while stationed in Kenya. After demobilisation, a more intellectual attitude to Knowland’s “discoveries of the eye” developed during three years at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts under William Coldstream and Lawrence Gowing.

Between 1949–72 Knowland examined for London University and taught at the Spendlove Centre in Charlbury, Charterhouse, Ruskin School and St Clare’s Hall in Oxford and West Oxfordshire Technical College, painting when he could. He illustrated two books; painted several murals in London and one at Watlington Secondary School; and showed as a member of Oxford Art Society and in London, Norwich, Brighton and in West Germany and South Africa. Aged 54, retired early, he took a studio in Little Coxwell, Oxfordshire. There was a memorial show at the Central Library, Oxford, in 1987.