1514162240Alice Knight18611963AliceKnighthttps://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/4492/fullTinsel painting was considered an acceptable avocation for women, some of whom became instructors. Although the majority remained skilled amateurs, others, like the versatile twentieth-century practitioner Alice Knight, were professional painters. Knight, of Hillsborough, New Hampshire, is the rare tinsel painter who left a legacy in her community. A few residents still recall the artist, who for more than forty years had a teaching studio on Main Street on the central square, a space now occupied by the town clerk. Knight was an ornamental painter remembered for her landscapes, decorative furniture and trays, and reverse paintings on glass featuring bouquets and flowers in vases, pots, and urns. Her work, some of it signed, is found in Hillsborough homes. Over the years, many of Knight’s paintings have also been sold at auction and collected by a wider audience. Born Alice Archer in Ludlow, England, she immigrated to America in 1889 and initially lived in Cleveland, Ohio, where she worked as a waitress, Rochester, New York, and Claremont, New Hampshire, where she worked in a cotton mill. Archer married Charles Knight (?–1934), a shoe shop clerk who was also a landscape painter. The couple moved to Hillsborough, and sometime thereafter Alice Knight began to create art full-time, although she augmented her income by taking care of children and working as a door-to-door saleswoman. According to her obituary, Knight painted until five years before her death. And as demonstrated in her more complex reverse paintings on glass, such as the versions of Urn of Flowers with Scene from Ballet Swan Lake, the artist was highly skilled at mixing colors for use in this challenging technique.(1861–1963)LudlowHillsboroughLudlowHillsboroughLudlowHillsboroughAlice KnightAlice Archer