Dora Khayatt was born on 18 January 1912, into an ancient Coptic family in Cairo, Egypt. A self-taught artist, she first gained recognition in 1950 when her work was featured in a group exhibition at the British Institute in Cairo. Following this success, she moved to London, where she held her first solo exhibition at the Redfern Gallery later the same year. Khayatt continued her artistic career in the United Kingdom before eventually relocating to the United States with her husband, where she consolidated her reputation.
Painter and amateur golfer Dora Khayatt was born in 1912 into an ancient Coptic family in Cairo, Egypt. Her father was an Egyptian senator, and her mother was an advocate for women’s rights in Egypt during the 1920s. She enjoyed a privileged childhood and was naturally drawn to art from a young age. During summer trips to Europe, she often visited galleries in Paris and Berlin with her nannies. Although she loved drawing as a child, she began painting more seriously at the age of 36, after meeting her future husband, John Plant, who was serving with British forces in Egypt during the Second World War. Khayatt adopted her husband’s surname, becoming known as Dora Plant, but continued to paint under her maiden name, Dora Khayatt. Plant gifted Khayatt her first set of oil paints for Christmas in 1948, and within a year, she was exhibiting her work in Cairo. She often travelled across Europe and painted. Khayatt was also a successful amateur golfer, like her husband, and competed under the name Dora Plant. While still living in Egypt, she became a four-time amateur golf champion, also winning the Open Championship and competing in the Swiss Open.
In 1950, her work was featured in a collective exhibition at the British Institute in Cairo. Later that year, she immigrated to England and held her first solo show at the prestigious Redfern Gallery in London. The exhibition was a success; she sold 29 of the 30 works displayed. Khayatt later recalled in an interview that she had feared the show would be a failure, with only one painting (her favourite) selling. Interestingly, the piece she wanted to keep was the one that eventually did not sell (Wallace 1983, p. 3). The exhibition included vivid landscapes and seascapes, in which she applied colour with a lyrical touch using a palette knife. The Observer art critic Neville Wallis noted that Khayatt manipulated ‘her slabs of paint with dexterity, and usually content to weave delicious patterns of colour with little regard for the form,’ (Wallis, 1950, p. 6). The Times commented that Khayatt painted ‘with paint so thick that it sometimes has the appearance of being modelled; her figures in particular, as in Refugee Camp protrude so far from the canvas that the result is more like a bas-relief than a picture. But, in spite of the eccentricity of her technique the most interesting quality of her work seems to be its originality of vision; her subjects never look as if they had been painted by other artists before,’ (1950, p. 8). In 1952, Khayatt exhibited again at the Redfern in a group show also featuring works by noted painters of the day, Maurice Utrillo, Michael Ayrton and Sidney Nolan, and, in 1956, at the prestigious Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris. She continued to attend golf tournaments in the UK as a spectator, where she was described as a ‘fashionable figure in a heavy navy-blue coat with big brass buttons. Over her nylons, almost to the knees, she wore neat green stockings. On her wrist was a tinkling bracelet of gold, antique Byzantine coins and pieces of jade’ (Dundee Courier, 1950, p. 3).
Khayatt is known for her watercolours and oils on canvas, and her subjects included portraits, still lifes, flowers, and landscapes from Egypt, France, Italy, and Scotland, among other locations. Little Port, from the Leicestershire County Council Artworks Collection, exemplifies her work. This 1950 oil on canvas exhibits a dynamic interplay of texture and colour via an expressive use of thick, impasto strokes that generate a sense of movement and depth. The scene of a British harbour view, is rendered with a certain degree of abstraction, allowing the forms of boats and the scenery to blend into one another, evoking the fleeting and mutable nature of the environment and a sense of drama. The sky and water are caught in a dramatic swirling composition of cool tones and punctuated by brighter accents. Khayatt’s style shares affinities with both the European Expressionist and Post-Impressionism movements.
In 1957, she and her husband moved to Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, USA, and in 1960, she made her New York debut at the renowned Wildenstein Gallery. In 1961, the proceeds from the sales of her paintings were dedicated to supporting an American mental health association. In 1968, her paintings filled two galleries in an exhibition at the Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama, USA and the museum later purchased pieces from the Dora. K. Plant memorials funds. Khayatt died in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA on 6 November 1986. Established in 1990, the Dora Khayatt Prize in Music and Art is given annually in her name at the Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square, where her husband was the head of the classical department. In the UK public domain, Leicestershire County Council Artworks Collection holds two of her paintings.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Dora Khayatt]
Publications related to [Dora Khayatt] in the Ben Uri Library