John Baverstock Knight (1785-1859)

October 19, 2007 at 4:00 am (Biography, Genealogy)
Tags: Baverstock, Child Okeford, Knight, Piddlehinton

The following obituary of John Baverstock Knight is taken from The Gentleman’s Magazine, Volume VII, 1859 and is a reprint of the original which appeared in the Dorset County Chronicle.

JOHN BAVERSTOCK KNIGHT, ESQ.

May 14. At West Lodge, Piddlehinton, aged 74, John Baverstock Knight, Esq. Mr. Knight was born on the 3rd of May, 1785, at the Parsonage-house of Langton, near Blandford, and was the second son of James Forster Knight, Esq., and Sophia his wife. His early education was entirely the happy and well-fulfilled work of his father and mother at home; but, at a suitable age, he was sent to a commercial school, under the superintendence of Mr. Longman, at Child Okeford. There he was much in the society of the amiable Archdeacon Hall, who had marked his gifted mind, and entertained for him a truly parental regard. On leaving school, he became an assistant to his father as land surveyor and land-agent. But his love of painting, which had shown itself from his early childhood, and was encouraged by his father, who was himself a man of science and no mean judge of art, became more and more the leading taste of his mind. In his professional excursions with his father, he carried on his art studies by sketches from nature (optima dux), and studies of skies, and the foliage and forms of all kinds of trees, with effects of light and colour, and thus won in early life that truth and sweetness which are shown in so many of his water-colour sketches and paintings of landscape. On his father’s death, the anxieties of a family, as well as the care of a widowed mother and the education of a younger brother, devolved upon him, as his elder brother had died in early life, and he fulfilled these duties with a faithfulness and love which must have afforded him great peace in later days. He soon afterwards married, but, notwithstanding the manifold calls on his time and attention, yet, by early rising and late repose, and by the devotion to the beautiful of what might otherwise have been idle half-hours, he found time for the prosecution of art. Mr. Knight was acquainted with many artists and men of learning, such as Fueli, Sir Thomas Lawrence, Luny, Mrs. Garrick, and others. The Rev. Thomas Rackett, many years rector of Spettisbury, well known as an antiquary, and no mean artist and scholar, was an intimate friend of Mr. Knight, and sat many happy hours at his side to sketch pretty bits of Dorset landscape; and Mrs. Garrick, as well as Lord Arundel and Wardour, allowed him the use of original pictures to copy as studies of good styles. Mr. Knight’s fancy and feeling were quicker than his hand, and therefore he had in his painting-room a vast number of pictures, and especially of pictures in oil, in an unfinished state. Even after his health had long given way, his hand retained its usual firmness, and he could still continue the sketching from nature which had been the habit of his whole life; but, as his disorder increased on him, his nerves could no longer bear the application which painting demands, and his thoughts turning more and more to those more serious meditations which his state demanded, he relinquished for ever those pursuits which had been to a certain extent the pleasure of his lifetime. His remaining days were solaced by the kindness of two patrons, who, having been the friends of his earlier years, never withdrew their generous attention from his declining days, – we allude to James John Farquharson, Esq., and his Grace the present Duke of Bedford, – the remembrance of whose continued kindness cheered him to the last.

Dorset County Chronicle.