Louis Aston Knight (1873-1948), commonly regarded as an expatriate, was in fact born in Paris to American parents, his father the celebrated American painter Daniel Ridgway Knight. Receiving early and influential instruction from his father, he later studied at the Académie Julian under Jules Lefebvre and Tony Robert-Fleury between 1891 and 1898, absorbing both the rigorous French academic tradition and the direct example of his own father's successful expatriate practice.

Knight's exhibition debut came at the annual Paris Salon in 1894, and it thrust him into an increasingly successful career over which he was awarded numerous honors. He was notably the first American painter to win the Paris Salon gold medals in two consecutive years, and his work was included in such distinguished venues as the Paris World's Fair of 1900. In 1927 he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, one of the highest recognitions available to an artist working in France.

Although he resided in Paris throughout his life, Knight exhibited very frequently throughout the United States, and his paintings found particularly enthusiastic audiences among American collectors of the Gilded Age and the interwar years. His most celebrated painting, The Afterglow, was acquired by President Warren G. Harding in 1922 for the White House, an official recognition that confirmed his standing as one of the most admired American painters of his generation. Knight worked extensively in the small Norman village of Beaumont-le-Roger, where he maintained a country home along the river, and the sun-dappled water scenes, ivy-covered stone houses, and quiet French river landscapes he painted there defined his mature style. His paintings combine careful topographical accuracy with a luminous, romantic sensibility and highly refined reflections on still water, and they remain among the most beloved American paintings of French rural life. His pictures are held today in major American museums and in significant private collections.