A charcoal study from the 1890s by Dame Laura Knight (1877–1970), the first woman elected to the Royal Academy in 1936 and one of the defining figures of twentieth-century British art. Drawn at the Nottingham School of Art before her marriage to fellow painter Harold Knight in 1903.

This academic study of a young woman reflects the precise, observational draughtsmanship for which Knight - later celebrated for her circus, ballet and wartime subjects - first won recognition as a student.

The exhibition at the Royal Academy (Laura Knight: A Working Life) has brought to mind once again the achievement of Laura Knight, a prominent figure in the story of twentieth-century British art and one who has always been admired in our family. Both my grandfather and father bought and sold her charcoal drawings in prodigious quantities... Drawn at some point before they married in 1903, the academic study presented here is an early indication of Laura's exceptional draughtsmanship. Very much of its time, too, the sheet also bears out her teacher William Foster's emphasis on drawing with absolute attention to detail.