In the first publication about the watercolours of the then Charles Prince of Wales (King Charles III) in 1991, Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother wrote: ‘Ever since he was a small boy Prince Charles has taken an interest in his surroundings, and has developed his powers of observation to the point where painting became a necessary and vital expression of his interest …. After advice from teachers and friends, it is interesting to see how may grandson’s technique and ability have gradually changed and improved through the years, so that he has now developed a definite style of his own. Some of the paintings are delightfully evocative, especially of those scenes I know so well, and I think it is apparent just how much his heart and soul have gone into their production’.
Although he has painted since childhood, the Prince of Wales did not take it up seriously until the mid-1980s, when he started to paint landscape watercolours: ‘I wanted to create something with more texture and life than you can with photographs’, he explains. ‘I used to take a camera with me on tours, but I found photos rather flat; they don’t give a sense of the feeling of a landscape. I had the urge to express what I feel in paint’. During the past 15 years, the Prince has painted over 450 watercolours, many of which hang at Highgrove House. Some have been painted on official trips abroad during rare moments specially set aside for painting; and some in the United Kingdom, while staying at Balmoral and Sandringham, and occasionally at Highgrove, or while with friends in Lancashire and Yorkshire. Many have been produced during private holidays abroad, including the Swiss Alps, Provence, Granada, and in the Mediterranean, particularly the Greek and Turkish islands. Despite the demands on his time, the Prince has managed to produce on average 30 pictures a year.
Although the watercolour medium is notoriously difficult to command and mistakes cannot be covered up with overprinting, it is convenient, practical, requires little equipment, and is expedient for capturing the fleeting effects of nature. Since the late 18th century, it has been regarded as a peculiarly British painting medium and some of its greatest exponents have been British artists such as Cotman, Girtin, Towne, and Turner, all of whom are hugely admired by the Prince. The varieties of landscape, weather, light, and colour that Britain typically offers throughout the year, have helped to create an outstanding tradition of artists alert to the subtleties of changing atmospheric effects and able to capture the feel and spirit of landscape.
The exhibition Travels with the Prince in 1998-99 at Hampton Court Palace, which included 50 of the Prince’s watercolours painted between 1994 and 1998, showed just how much the Prince’s art had progressed. It revealed how confident he was becoming in tackling almost any kind of landscape, from snow-capped mountains to deserts. Compared with his earlier work, in which pencil is used to delineate and contain form, and in which brushwork is tentative and unadventurous, there is a freedom of expression, which is characterised by the confident use of wide-ranging painterly techniques: delicate application of washes to capture the reflected light in a river running through a game reserve in Tanzania, for example; or fluid and sweeping brushwork to describe the long shadows cast by cypress trees in a mountainous Greek landscape in the sharp golden light of an early evening. The group of Balmoral landscapes, painted in January 1998, and the latest works included in the Hampton Court exhibition, seem in particular to mark a new development. They capture the full drama and energy of the elements in a Scottish winter, each picture providing a striking variation on the theme. Gestural painting over flat tonal washes, wet worked into wet, strong contrasts of light and dark, busy passages alongside quiet, and incidental and experimental happenings on the paper, all indicate an aesthetic sensibility beginning to develop its own distinct visual vocabulary. Here is an artist no longer tied to what he sees in front of him, but trying to express his own feelings of what the landscape means to him.
In the paintings the Prince has produced since then, 30 of which have been selected for the Painting & Patronage exhibition, it is clear that his interest in the possibilities of the watercolour medium has increased still further. There is a strong sense of curiosity, experimentation, discovery, and enjoyment. There is now more for the eye to see when it journeys around these latest watercolours. In earlier work there is a tendency for the landscape to be seen as a dynamic whole, depicting incredible locations and panoramas, but not inviting a closer look at its parts. The Prince has developed a more acute observation, is more selective in his editing (what he leaves out can be as important as what he puts in), and consequently is more practiced at composition. Although he still loves to paint in the landscape, direct from the motif, he has also started to make careful notes in a sketchbook of features and colours to which he can return later for the basis of a painting in which memory and imagination are fused. Careful analysis of a scene and note-taking has helped him better to understand the picture-making process, without affecting the liveliness and spontaneity. This is especially noticeable in the development of his palette, which before was restricted mostly to earth colours and had a sense of inevitability about it, irrespective of the scene being depicted. The colour values across a landscape tended not to vary too much, whereas in the recent pictures there are starling outbreaks, such as the splash of red amidst purples and blues in Red Sunset, Mediterranean (No.27, above left); or the thick drop of deep blue, which holds the centre in Early Evening in a Greek Landscape (No.49, above right); and the marvellous smouldering rust colours in the foreground of Greek Mountains at Sunset (No.40, left). Colour has become something to enjoy for its own sake, rather than being just a descriptive element of a visual language. Indeed, in the last picture, colour and light are clearly the principal subjects, rather than the place itself. The foreground cauldron of dappled colours, flickering brushwork, washes, and ‘wet on wet’ create a tremendous feeling of surging movement which contrasts with the quieter treatment of the rest of the landscape as it recedes. The Prince has carefully studied the three differing light effects on mass at distance and the way each suggests form. The smoky and ghosted appearance of the two mountain ranges, one in half shadow, the other dissolving in a soft pinkish glow, is beautifully suggested. The eye is effortlessly led from the foreground through the picture by its tonal values and not by compositional devices, such as a strategically placed clump of trees or a land form rearing up to one side of the picture plane. The difficulties of linking foreground to middle distance and background are gradually being resolved by the Prince through his understanding of the way in which tonal relationships can unite a painting.
The new experimentation with techniques and materials, freely mixing them in whatever way he feels, has advanced the vitality of the Prince’s watercolour painting considerably. The textures of landscape have come to the fore as important ingredients. This is especially noticeable in a work such as Distant Landscape View in Scotland (No.36), which shows gathering storm clouds over windswept woods and distant mountains. The picture captures the urgency of landscape before a storm breaks, with its eerie electric light and rush of wind bursting across the land. The Prince has freely applied paint and allowed it to spread on the paper to suggest the forms of grouped trees running across the scene. He has then worked into the wet paint with a stick or the handle of his brush to show the trunks of trees as flashing streaks of light. The mountains are treated in a similar, though less aggressive way so that the rhythm and movement of trees and mountains complement each other. Elsewhere, conté crayon runs wild. The painting is likely to be a scene recaptured from notes made at the time, rather than something produced in situ. On seeing the painting on display recently at the annual exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in London, the President, Ronald Maddox, commented: ‘The Prince’s painting is progressing remarkably well. This painting is really one of the most experimental so far. It has an absolutely contemporary feeling of watercolour about it and is full of vitality’. Scottish Panoramic Landscape (No.37, right) shows similar techniques, though here the effect the Prince is after is of a glowing winter light breaking through clouds and the impact this has as it plays on the wooded and snow-covered landscape below.
In the most recent watercolours Glen Callater, Braemar (No.56, left), and Aberdeenshire, near Braemar, in January (No.55) the sky is as important as the land. One of the frustrations landscape painters face is that light can change so quickly, especially when there is some cloud cover, that it is simply not possible to record a particular light. In hot climates, there is the additional problem of paint drying so quickly that it is difficult to mix wet colours with wet on the paper to get a required effect. As the Prince’s paintings of the landscapes around Balmoral and Sandringham show, it is important that the artist experiences and observes the landscape and its moods as much as possible. The Prince has walked and known them intimately since childhood, and has now reached a stage in his development as an artist when he can freely tap into the knowledge and imagery he has stored over the years. It is a pity that, unlike professional landscape painters who are free to paint all year round, he is able to spend only a few hours here and there. To be able to paint a particular landscape he knows well, such as in Scotland, Provence, or the Greek Islands, through the seasons, at different times of day, would present not only a great challenge, but also help to develop and fine tune his art. Pictures such as Greek Thunderstorm (No.29, above left) and Purple Clouds Over a Greek Landscape (No.39, above right) show the gift he now has for capturing the drama and atmosphere of landscape, while the rendering of the mists rising from the trees and the blinding light from the lake in Lochmore, Sutherland (No.33, left), or the golden glow of the hill and valley in View of Mont Ventoux in Provence (No.50, right), reveal his ability to freeze a detail, incident, or moment of landscape. In his two paintings of the majestic scenery of Asir, Overlookinng Wadi Arkam (No.51, left) and Jabal Sofhan (No.52, right), he is studying the structure of the landscape and the different ways in which the rays of the sun make it come alive. The Prince has clearly enjoyed painting those seductive minutes of transition when the landscape is coloured both cool and warm, and appears in parts both static and energetic.
The apex of the Prince’s achievement as a watercolour painter so far rests in a painting such as Mountainous Landscape in Turkey (No.43, left), in which all the elements of composition, light, colour, technique, and atmosphere are beautifully poised. He has benefited greatly from the encouragement and guidance in painting from his artist friends, who have done much to draw out his talent, and his progress has been gradual. Although he is characteristically modest about his art and remains firmly rooted in his amateur status as an artist, it is evident from the latest pictures that there is the potential for the Prince to develop much further. With such an inquisitive eye, his art is unlikely to stand still, but rather move in new directions where he can refine his craft and explore new avenues of expression. From the evidence of his latest pictures, it appears that the Prince has turned to his advantage the limited time available to him to paint. There is the sense that he now thrives under the pressure to achieve something in the precious hour or two he is given, and feels excited, rather than daunted, by the freedom and the challenge. This augurs well for future work.
On 8 September 2022 The Prince of Wales ascended to the Throne as His Majesty King Charles III.