Fascinating figure from the art world

Museum Friend Rick Domas, who is preparing for a forthcoming talk, looks at a colourful character from the art world.

Richard Payne Knight (1750–1824) was a wealthy English landowner, classical scholar, connoisseur, and leading figure in the late 18th-century British art world.

He is best remembered for his contributions to aesthetic theory, particularly his involvement in the Picturesque movement, and for his role as an antiquarian and benefactor of the British Museum.

Born into a prosperous family in Herefordshire, Knight inherited the Downton Castle estate (near Ludlow in Herefordshire) at a young age (14!) from his uncle, who had amassed a fortune in the iron industry.

Educated in classics and deeply influenced by his Grand Tour travels in Italy and Greece, Knight developed a profound interest in ancient art, architecture, and mythology.

His most controversial scholarly work, A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus (1786), explored ancient fertility cults and the symbolic use of phallic imagery in antiquity, reflecting his broader fascination with classical eroticism and religious symbolism.

Knight lived during a period of profound change in British culture, bridging the Age of Enlightenment and the Romantic era.

The architects Sir John Soane, John Nash, James Wyatt, and the landscape architect Humphry Repton were his peers in the design world.

Others in the fields of literature and arts included the influential Horace Walpole, noted writer, collector, and Gothic revivalist, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Ann Radcliffe, novelist of Gothic romances.

Also, the renowned painter J.M.W. Turner, John Robert Cozens, landscape artist, Edmund Burke, philosopher and MP, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the Royal Academy, and Thomas Rowlandson, satirical artist.

Can you imagine a dinner party with a handful of these great minds as guests?

Knight was a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and the Royal Society and served as a trustee of the British Museum.

Upon his death, he left a major bequest to the museum that included an extraordinary collection of Greek coins, bronzes, engraved gems, and more than 1,300 Old Master drawings.

Among the latter are works attributed to Raphael, Michelangelo, and Claude Lorrain, a foundational gift that greatly enriched the museum’s holdings in classical and Renaissance art.

A major exhibition of Knight’s Old Master drawings is underway now at the British Museum (through September 14), marking the first time that a representative selection
of this important bequest has been displayed since its arrival at the British Museum in 1824.

For more information about the exhibition follow the link below: https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/raphael-cozens-drawings-richard-payne-knight-bequest

Rick’s presentation Watercolours in the Horsham Museum Collection will be on Wednesday, July 30, at 2pm, in the lounge of the Cornerstone Methodist Church, London Road, Horsham. Admission is £5, refreshments included.