Gordon King

Gordon King is one of Britain’s most popular water colour artists producing stunning originals and beautiful limited edition prints.  Originals can command over £10,000 and his beautiful limited edition prints are avidly collected.  He is best known for his studies of the female form with limited edition prints taken from a range of studies created often from his studios in Buckinghamshire.

For the Darcey Bussell collection, Gordon was delighted to visit the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden to watch Darcey and in rehearsal for ‘Serenade’ which became one of the limited edition prints. He sketched and photographed her before producing a number of studies from which Darcey selected 3 to become limited editions:

In Rehearsal, Serenade and La Bayadere.

Limited editions of 1,000 were painstakingly produced. These were then hand numbered and individually signed both by Gordon King and Darcey Bussell.

Gordon King Biographical Notes

Born in 1939, Gordon’s talent came to the fore early on and he won several major art competitions from the age of seven. After leaving school he concentrated on figurative illustration, undergoing training at Carlton Studios in London and studying art at Reading University. In his early twenties he became a freelance illustrator, but in the mid-seventies he gave up illustration to become a full-time painter.

Success came quite rapidly with work, mainly figurative subjects, accepted for showing at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibitions and at the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours. His paintings of girls in natural surroundings soon became his trade mark and the popularity of his watercolours in the early eighties together with the success of his prints, limited editions and silk screens brought him the high profile that he has today. In 1995, his first book “A Romance with Art” was published with a foreword by HRH The Princess Royal, featuring a wide range of both oils and watercolours. He exhibits worldwide and has been featured in a number of television programmes including the BBC2 arts series “Close-Up” , Channel 5’s “Open House” and Sky Sports at the PGA short course championships.

He has been very active in support of various charities, including projects for the Save the Children Fund, painting in front of a live audience for the BBC’s “Children in Need” appeal and painting a portrait of Sir Norman Wisdom in aid of the RNLI. One of his most recent projects is a set of three limited edition prints of the dancer Darcey Bussell, signed by her, in aid of the Alzheimer’s Society. In 1999, to celebrate his sixtieth birthday, Gordon’s second book “Drawn to Life” was published. In addition he received a prestigious award from the Fine Art Trade Guild who voted him “Published Artist of the Year”

For more information visit his Gordon King web site.