Tempera on board
Knight’s career as an artist began when she settled in Harlem in 1932. There, she met sculptor and educator Augusta Savage, through whom she became involved in a variety of Works Progress Administration arts programs and projects, including assisting with murals for Harlem Hospital. In 1934, while taking classes at the Harlem Community Arts Center, she met fellow artist Jacob Lawrence, whom she married in July 1941. Around that time, she painted the intimately sized, vividly colored Boudoir. “I am a figurative humanistic painter,” Knight once said. “I paint the human form and I especially love nudes.”
521: American Idioms, 2025
Explore more
American Idioms
Gallery 521From the Great Depression through World War II, the United States experienced a period of turbulence and transformation. Informed by shifting social and economic dynamics at home and abroad, artists developed unique approaches to narrative art in diverse styles and mediums.
Learn more →
From MoMA Design Store
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.