Description
A large very colourful oil on board of a pair of swans in the River Thames with Windsor Castle in the background by Jeremy King. It is believed that this painting could be a montage of three different pictures melded as one with Windsor Castle to the top left, Eton Chapel to the top right and the river front at Datchet or Eton to the front, with a miniature self portrait thrown in for good measure! This is a most colourful painting with a great feeling of fun. It is framed with a modern wide gilded wooden frame. Its overall size is 95 x 75 cm with the picture itself measuring 75 x 55 cm.
Jeremy King was born in 1933 in Northamptonshire, studied at Lancaster College of Arts and Crafts, moved after National Service to Buckinghamshire where he became a teacher. Left teaching in 1967 to become a full time artist. Painted many scenes up and down The River Thames and in 1977 moved with his artist wife, Brenda King, to Cornwall. He has pictures in The Tate amongst many other galleries around the world.
The following is an excerpt from a newspaper article featuring this beautiful painting…
King, Queen and Royal Berkshire.
If you are lucky, at some point in your life, you will come across an artist whose work you simply fall in love with, one of my personal passions is art by Jeremy King. Now, whilst I recognise this is not for everyone, art is such a personal choice after all, I can’t help but feel that this particular painting is one that we have every right to be proud of in Berkshire. To understand why I need to give you a bit of context.
Jeremy King was an art and design teacher at Haymills School in Burnham near Slough until 1967 when he decided to become a full-time artist. Many of his works around that time were of riverside scenes along the Berkshire section of The Thames. He and his family moved away to Cornwall in the mid 1970’s but not before Mr King had built a significant catalogue of, and love for many Berkshire scenes. Jeremy King has since become a very successful artist with some of his work having been hung in The Tate Gallery and indeed some of his limited-edition prints are in The Tate’s print collection.
Now this painting, called “Swans at Windsor”, I believe is a very personal painting by the artist because it is not an actual scene that you will ever see, but it is possibly a montage of some of his favourite things, all in one painting. It has Windsor Castle right next to the chapel at Eton with the riverside in the foreground either being at Datchet or Old Windsor, where one can catch a ride on a pleasure boat. Not only that but the artist has put two swans in the river, which he often did when painting Windsor riverside scenes, possibly his tribute to the Queen and Prince Philip. In addition to this there is an artist on the riverside behind whom is a family group. This could well be himself and his own family. What is more, by the date, this would have been painted after the artist had reached his 65th birthday….this could well be his own personal tribute to his past in Berkshire.
