Mary Ann Knight

Mary Anne Knight (7 September 1776 – 1851) was an English miniature-painter, specialising in miniatures of children and babies. She was closely associated with Andrew Plimer, who married her sister.

Knight was born on 7 September 1776 at Birchin Lane, London, the daughter of Frances Woodcock and John Knight, a City of London merchant. She was one of ten children of the family.

At the age of twenty-six she began to paint portraits in order to assist her parents, who had fallen upon hard times, and she received instruction in miniature work from Andrew Plimer. It is stated that it was through her coming for lessons that he made the acquaintance of her elder sister Joanna Louisa, whom he afterwards married. He seems to have retained a considerable affection for Mary Ann, and she spent much of her time at his house. Although she was receiving skills that Plimer himself had been indulgently given by his own master Richard Cosway. She painted portraits from 1802 down to 1836, a period of thirty-four years, and a list of her works, extracted from her note-books, are appended in Williamson (1903)

She kept a very careful account of her earnings, and records that she made the sum of £5,171 9s. 8d., being an average of 150 guineas a year throughout the above period. At first, however, the sums which she obtained for her work were very small, ranging from two to four guineas for a portrait. Occasionally for some years she was able to get five, and even six guineas for a larger portrait, but the average price continued lower than that. Gradually, however, her prices crept up, and at the end of 1805 she was receiving nine guineas for the larger and seven guineas for the smaller size, and ten guineas for portraits of children, with which she was known to be particularly successful. In 1809 ten guineas seems to have been her usual price, and in 1815 this became fifteen guineas, occasionally rising to twenty, and, in a few instances, even to thirty guineas for the portrait of a child.

Miss Knight began to exhibit at the Royal Academy in 1803, and sent in all thirty pictures to that gallery, exhibiting also two unnamed pictures at the Old Water-Colour Society. She ceased work in 1836, having recorded altogether 696 portraits, at an average price of 7.5 guineas apiece. Certain portraits appearing in the Royal Academy catalogues are not to be found in her list, in which there are many curious omissions. Some years have hardly any entries given to them, and nothing at all actually appears marked for the years 1818, 1820, and 1832, although Academy catalogues show her exhibiting in 1818.

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