Painter, draughtsman, illustrator, muralist and teacher, born in London, who practised art while at Dulwich College and Frensham Heights. Aged 16 he met R O Dunlop, who encouraged the use of a palette knife. In 1935 he spent a year at Chelsea School of Art, taught by Graham Sutherland and Robert Medley, winning a prize for landscape. From 1936–40 Knowland worked in advertising, painting on Sundays, aged 18 showing The Lane, Kenwood, Hampstead, with the LG. During World War II Army service in Scotland Anne Redpath lent him a studio, and he continued to paint while stationed in Kenya. After demobilisation, a more intellectual attitude to Knowland’s “discoveries of the eye” developed during three years at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts under William Coldstream and Lawrence Gowing.