Attributed to Harold Knight (1874-1961)
Around the time of the First World War, Harold and Laura Knight often went on painting holidays in Cornwall, staying in caravans with their friends Harold and Gertrude Harvey, and Charles and Ella Naper. Harold Harvey painted unmistakably the same boy in 1917 (Daffodils, Christie's 28 November 1996), looking towards us with a basket of flowers, in his typically broad hand. Knight preferred a hard profile and a flatter treatment, and painted the same boy in the same year, in a hat typical of Newlyn fishermen (Knight wore one himself).