Eline Holst McKnight, printmaker, painter, and pastel artist, was born to Dutch parents, Willem and Henriette Holst, in Yokohama, Japan, on July 31, 1910. Her mother was a noted art critic for the Amsterdam Telegraaf, and contributed columns to newspapers in Java, Surabaya, London, and New York, her father Willem was an art manager for R.H. Macy & Co. The Holst family lived in Japan for 17 years, lecturing on Dutch and Japanese customs and authoring a book titled "A Study of the Life of Japanese Women". Eline was born in Yokahama in 1910. The family lost their collection of artworks in the fires created by the 1923 earthquake.

The family moved to the U.S. in 1925 and Eline lived in Nassau, New York and studied in Manhattan, attending Barnard College and Teachers College, Columbia University; Art Students League, NY; and Yale School of Fine Arts, as well as various schools in Japan and Holland. She married Maxwell Stewart McKnight in 1936 in Virginia where she was teaching art at Chatham Hall's Horace Mann School for Girls. They returned to New York in the 1940s. In 1964 she conducted discussion groups on looking at modern art for the Ford Fund Adult Education program, and was a member of the editorial staff for the New York Arts Calendar and the Collectors Almanac in the 1960s.

Her work is included in collections at the Library of Congress, New York Hilton Hotel, the Rockefeller Center, and the University of Tennessee.  She was awarded a purchase prize, prints for U.S. and Abroad, U.S. Info Agency.  Exhibitions include:  US Info Agency Traveling Exhib., Europe, 1960-62; Society of American Graphic Artists Traveling Exhib., 1960-62; Brooklyn Museum, 1960, 1964, 1966; Amerika Haus, Stuttgart, 1965; Corcoran Gallery, 1967. 

Eline McKnight died on November 30, 2000 in Highstown, New Jersey.