Nuremberg Trials Study No. 2

This study, recorded in the Catalogue Raisonné as D# 0440, is one of a pair of chalk and watercolour sketches of prisoners in the dock by Dame Laura Knight, who had been an Official War Artist during the Second World War and was commissioned by the War Artists' Advisory Committee to attend the Nuremberg Trials, which began in 1945 and saw the conviction of 19 major Nazi war criminals including Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Hans Frank and Joachim von Ribbentrop. Knight executed a series of studies that were later realised on a large-scale canvas as the painting, The Dock, Nuremberg 1946 (Imperial War Museum), depicting the trial in courtroom no. 600 in Nuremberg's Palace of Justice. This study shows ten of the defendants: Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick, Julius Streicher, Walther Funk, Hjalmar Schacht, Franz von Papen, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, Albert Speer, Konstantin von Neurath and Hans Fritzsche, seated in two rows, orresponding to a portion of the foreground and centreground of the finished painting. It displays the meticulous realist style and close attention to detail for which Knight was celebrated.