DANIEL RIDGWAY KNIGHT 1839-1924
Life is Sweet, c. 1900-1915
Oil on canvas, 32 1/2 X 25 1/2" (82.55 x 64.77 cm.)
Signed, lower left
Gift of the estate of Mrs. Robert Bentley, 959-0-101

Daniel Ridgway Knight could have titled the vast majority of his paintings Life is Sweet. The pastoral portrait of that name at the Butler Institute does, in fact, offer a modest vignette of French peasant life, which he tirelessly presented for fifty years to eager patrons in Europe and America.
Born into a strict Quaker home in Philadelphia, Knight was groomed for work in a local hardware store. He chose art instead, enrolling in 1858 in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where his fellow students included Mary Cassatt, Thomas Eakins, William Sartain, and Everett Shinn. A student from France, Lucien Gr6pon, plied Knight with stories of fine classes and fine wine to be found in Paris. After helping to establish the Philadelphia Sketch Club in 1861, Knight sailed for France that same year, the first to do so among his Philadelphia peers.
In Paris, Knight enrolled in the Atelier Gleyre and the classes of Alexander Cabanel at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While with Gleyre, Knight began long-term friendships with the young Impressionists Alfred Sisley and Auguste Renoir, an unusual relationship for an aspiring history painter. As the American Civil War moved closer to Philadelphia in 1863, Knight returned home to enlist.
Knight spent the next ten years in Philadelphia, continuing his studies after the war with fellow Sketch Club members or on his own. He exhibited historical subjects but, for money, painted portraits and taught in his studio. In 1871, Knight married one of his students, Rebecca Webster, and set out for his beloved Paris on his honeymoon. Although he had over fifty productive years ahead of him, he never returned to America.
By 1874, Knight had decided to specialize, almost exclusively, on the French peasantry, their (usually her) environment at home and in the open air of the fields. The precedent for this choice had already been
set decades before by the Barbizon school, particularly by Jean-Francois Millet. Unlike Millet, Knight seemed disinclined to strike the epic note in his depiction of peasants, most of whom are engaged in leisurely rather than laborious activities. In this respect, he was peculiarly American, an outsider to the heroic struggle and displacement of the French farmers throughout the industrial revolution in France.
From his cottage in Poissey with its glass-enclosed studio and gardens, Knight was able to work in the "open" protected from the weather in an aesthetically controlled environment. His clients, in France and America primarily, filled his waiting lists because his moist gardens and distant rivers were pleasingly rendered, but also because his models filled a sentimental need for an agreeable human reference. In 1888, Knight told author and critic George Sheldon, "These peasants are as happy and content as any similar class in the world. They all save money and are small capitalists and investors.... They work hard to be sure but plenty of people do that."
Life is Sweet represents Knight at his best and most typical within his production of smaller scale pieces for his usual clientele. He also painted several large canvases for major exhibitions, the best known of which is Hailing the Ferry (1888, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), which won the third gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1888. This painting is a highlight of the early work that shows social and stylistic affinities to Jules Bastien-Lepage, to Jules Breton, the artist he is most frequently compared to, and even, in overall "finish," to J.-L. Ernest Meissonier, the godfather to Knight's daughter. Life is Sweet, on the other hand, is a later version of Knight's academic Impressionism, looser, more varied in color, and more unified in effect.

PETER BERMINGHAM