Richard Payne Knight
Richard
Origins
He was born at Wormsley Grange in Wormsley, 5 miles (8 km) north-west of
Career
He was educated privately at home. Due to ill health, his years of education were few, but his inherited wealth allowed him to supplement it with travel.[4] For several years from 1767 he made the Grand Tour to Italy and the European continent. He was a collector of ancient bronzes and coins, and an author of numerous books and articles on ancient sculpture, coins and other artefacts. As a member of the Society of Dilettanti, Knight was widely considered to be an arbiter of taste. He expended much careful study on an edition of Homer.[4][5]
He was a member of parliament from 1780 to 1806, more as a spectator than an active participant in the debates.
Death and succession
Knight died unmarried on 23 April 1824, and was buried in the churchyard of
He bequeathed all his coins and medals to the British Museum, on condition that within one year after his decease, the next descendant in the direct male line, then living, of his grandfather, be made an hereditary trustee, "with all the privileges of the other family trustees, to be continued in perpetual succession to his next descendant, in the direct male line, so long as any shall exist; and in case of their failure, to the next in the female line".[14][10]
Will & Knight v. Knight (1840)
He made his will on 3 June 1814, leaving the property to his brother,
- "I trust to the liberality of my successors to reward any others of my old servants and tenants according to their deserts, and to their justice in continuing the estates in the male succession, according to the will of the founder of the family, my above-named grandfather".
Were it not for these last words, his will appeared to have created a trust, which would have precluded Charlotte from inheriting, as her father Thomas Knight died intestate and without male progeny, having been pre-deceased by his only son. One of his male Knight cousins (namely John Knight (1765-1850) of Lea Castle, Wolverley, of 52 Portland Place and of Simonsbath House, Exmoor, Somerset) challenged Charlotte's right as a female to inherit under the terms of Payne's will, which resulted in the famous 1840 lawsuit Knight v Knight. The judge decided that due to these last words in Payne's will, it had not been his intention to create a trust and therefore Thomas had inherited from him an absolute title in his property, which thus passed by law to his daughter.
Books
Notoriously, Knight's first book, A Discourse on the Worship of
Another book of interest to the neo-Pagan movement was Knight's Symbolical Language of Ancient Art and Mythology.
An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste, 1805, was, however, Knight's most influential work in his lifetime. This book sought to explain the experience of 'taste' within the mind and to clarify the theorisation of the concept of the picturesque, following from the writings of
Visual arts
For Knight "picturesque" means simply "after the manner of painting", a point which is important to his further discussion of sensation, which in Knight's view is central to the understanding of painting and music which are "addressed to the organs of sight and hearing", while poetry and sculpture appeal "entirely to the imagination and passions." The latter must be understood in terms of associations of ideas, while the former rely on the "irritation" or friction of sensitive parts of the body. Knight's view was that artists should seek to reproduce primal visual sensations, not the mental interpretative processes which give rise to abstract ideas.
For Knight, colour is experienced directly as pleasurable sensation. A pure blue is not pleasurable because it reminds us of clear skies, as Price supposed, but because of the experience itself. Interpretation of impressions follows chains of association following from this primal sensory experience. However, the pleasures of sense may be 'modified by habit', so that the pure stimulus of colour may be experienced as pleasurable when 'under the influence of mind' which perceives its meaningful use within a painting. Excess of pure colour is painful, like any other sensory excess. Variety and combination of colours is most pleasurable.
Knight makes much of the need to fragment an image into tonal and colouristic "masses", a view that has been claimed to anticipate the late work of
On sculpture – typically for him, colourless form – generates in the mind the idea of shape which we must conceptualise, as with 'proportion'. The literary arts, like sculpture, deal with thoughts and emotions, though in a more complex form. Knight's account of these arts therefore falls under the heading of 'association of ideas'. Here Knight shows the influence of the contemporary cult of sensibility, arguing that these arts engage our sympathies, and in so doing demonstrate the inadequacy of 'rules and systems' in both morality and aesthetics. These teach 'men to work by rule, instead of by feeling and observation.' Rule-based knowledge of wrong cannot prevent wrongdoing, because it is thought not felt. Therefore, 'it is impossible that tragedy should exhibit examples of pure and strict morality, without becoming dull and uninteresting.’
Knight's discussion of 'the passions' engages with both Classical and recent theorisations of sentiments. His discussion of the sublime is directed against Burke's emphasis on feelings of terror and powerlessness. Knight defends
Knight's emphasis on the roles of sensation and of emotion were constitutive of later Romantic and Victorian aesthetic thinking, as was his vexed struggle with the relation between moral feeling and sensuous pleasure. Though some contemporaries condemned the basis of his thought as an aestheticised libertinism, or devotion to physical sensation, they influenced John Ruskin's attempts to theorise the Romantic aesthetic of Turner, and to integrate political and pictorial values.
See also
- Knight v Knight (1840) 3 Beav 148
Notes
- ^ Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry, 15th Edition, ed. Pirie-Gordon, H., London, 1937, p.1306, pedigree of Rouse-Boughton-Knight of Downton Castle, 1st quarter. Blazoned similarly for their cousins Knight of Wolverley, Worcestershire, in: Victoria County History, Worcestershire, Vol.3, 1913, Parishes: Wolverley, pp.567-573 as: Argent, three pales gules in a bordure engrailed azure on a quarter gules a spur or (Victoria County History, Worcestershire, Vol.3, 1913, Parishes: Wolverley, pp.567-573)
- History of Parliamentbiography
- ^ History of Parliamentbiography
- ^ New International Encyclopedia(1st ed.). New York: Dodd, Mead.
- ^ a b c Rines, George Edwin, ed. (1920). Encyclopedia Americana. .
- History of Parliament biography [1]
- ^ His inheritance from his grandfather was discussed in great detail by the judge in the case of Knight v Knight (1840)
- ^ Ince, L., The Knight family and the British iron industry 1695–1902 (1991), 6
- ^ R. Page, 'Richard and Edward Knight: ironmasters of Bringewood and Wolverley' Transactions of Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club 43 (1979), 15.
- ^ a b Trustees of the Museum (10 December 1898). Statutes and Rules for the British Museum. London: Woodfall and Kinder. p. 31 – via Internet Archive (Biodiversity Heritage Library).
- ^ St Mary, Wormsley, Churches Conservation Trust, archived from the original on 18 February 2011, retrieved 21 October 2010
- ALGAO:England), 2006, retrieved 21 October 2010
- ^ HoP biography
- ^ Will of Payne Knight quoted in law suit Knight v Knight (1840)[2]
References
- Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs
- George Sebastian Rousseau, Roy Porter, Sexual underworlds of the Enlightenment, Manchester University Press ND, 1987, ISBN 0-7190-1961-3, pp. 101–155
Further reading
- Amherst, Alicia (2006) [1910]. A History of Gardening in England (3rd ed.). Whitefish, Montana: ISBN 9781428636804.
- Blomfield, Sir F. Reginald; Thomas, Inigo, Illustrator (1972) [1901]. The Formal Garden in England, 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan and Co.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - Clifford, Derek (1967). A History of Garden Design (2nd ed.). New York: Praeger.
- ISBN 978-0-87817-008-1.
- Gothein, Marie. Geschichte der Gartenkunst. München: Diederichs, 1988 ISBN 978-3-424-00935-4.
- Hadfield, Miles (1960). Gardening in Britain. Newton, Mass: C. T. Branford.
- Hussey, Christopher (1967). English Gardens and Landscapes, 1700–1750. Country Life.
- Hyams, Edward S.; Smith, Edwin, photos (1964). The English Garden. New York: H.N. Abrams.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
External links
- Dictionary of National Biography. 1885–1900. .
- The Worship of Priapus
- Roots & Leaves website on Richard Payne Knight
- "Knight, Richard Payne, Esq.". Biographical Dictionary of the Living Authors of Great Britain and Ireland. A.J. Valpey. 1816. pp. 191–192.