Fall in the Canyon, oil on canvas, 1939, gift of Mrs. Frederic C. Knight, 81.4.1

Frederic C. Knight (1898-1979) was a painter from Philadelphia who lived and worked in Scranton, PA for much of his life. The artist specialized in portraits, still lifes, and landscapes, particularly industrial landscapes depicting regional scenes,and was accomplished in a variety of compositional styles including American Realism and Abstractionism.

While born in Philadelphia, Knight spent much of his early years in Scranton, PA, where he delved into drawing and illustration from an early age. In 1923 at the age of 25, after having returned to Philadelphia as a young adult, he left Philadelphia for Woodstock, New York and took up painting, joining the Woodstock School of Painting. He once said, “I think the best I can do is to, through painting, express what I have felt about the visual world largely, because that has always and remains tremendously moving to me.”

In the years following Knight’s death in 1979, Mrs. Frederic C. Knight donated a substantial set of his paintings to the Everhart to establish a collection.