Knitting & Fine Art: The sock knitter, Grace Cossington Smith

Australian artist Grace Cossington Smith (1892–1984) painted “The sock knitter” in 1915. She had been working in oils for only a year—a short time to master the tricky medium. Her training up to that point had been in drawing, not painting. Her studies had taken place in Sydney, Southampton, and Stettin—respectable places, but hardly vibrant art capitals.

Above: Grace Cossington Smith, The sock knitter, (1915). 61.6 x 50.7 cm stretcher; 73.7 x 63.0 x 4.4 cm frame. Oil on canvas. Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Deeply informed by contemporary developments in French painting, the picture is a study in pattern, color, and carefully controlled contrasts. At the top, blue and orange, color opposites, vie for dominance. Meanwhile the knitter’s luminous pink ears and cheeks set off the oval of her face. The green in her hands resonates with the dull green of the bags or garments at her sides. The planes of color and the sprigged textile that form the background compress the space in which the woman is seated. Cossington Smith learned this flattening of the picture space from paintings by such artists as Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Henri Matisse.

Related: How a Sock Is Supposed to Fit

Cossington Smith also investigated the energizing properties of line. The curve of the sitter’s face and pale shirtfront sweeps down in a strong, graceful arc through her knitting hands and along her right arm, countering the austere rectilinearity of the background. The knitter herself is no less compelling. Anchoring the center of this visually energetic image is the painter’s younger sister Margaret, called Madge, knitting socks for the Australian war effort. Her calm, intense presence let Cossington Smith construct around her sister one of the earliest examples of Australian modernist painting.

—Fronia E. Wissman

Originally published in Interweave Knits Fall 2007.

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