This summer, visitors to the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace will see a special exhibition, The King’s Tour Artists, featuring over 70 works of art from His Majesty’s own collection
An accompanying publication, The Art of Royal Travel: Journeys with The King, will further explore and celebrate this special royal tradition, featuring recollections from the artists and with over 100 illustrations.
Inspired
In 1985, the then Prince of Wales invited John Ward to join a royal visit to Italy as the official tour artist, with the brief to draw or paint whatever inspired him. For the subsequent 40 years, an artist has been personally selected and paid for by The King to accompany the travelling party on a royal overseas tour, with the brief remaining largely unchanged throughout.
Forty-two artists to have undertaken this role, who collectively have visited 95 countries during 69 tours, will be represented in the exhibition and publication.
Glimpses
The initiative has provided an opportunity for both experienced and emerging artists to undertake a unique commission and a concentrated period of work in the country or countries visited. The works on display in the Palace’s Ballroom, chosen from a selection made by The King from his personal collection, will provide glimpses of life on a royal tour, capturing the tone, colours and atmosphere in ways that differ from a photographic record.
John Ward had previously made sketches of the Royal Family in Balmoral and had supported the then Prince of Wales’s interest in sketching and painting. In 1985, the tour of Italy was at its halfway point when Ward joined, boarding the Royal Yacht, HMY Britannia, in the port of Catania before she set sail for Venice.
Handover
Often the backdrop to royal tours, HMY Britannia also features in the work by Susannah Fiennes, produced during a visit by the then Prince of Wales to Hong Kong when representing Queen Elizabeth II for the handover to China in 1997.
Fiennes made sketches of life on board, including a watercolour of two Royal Yachtsmen following the daily routine of lowering and raising the flag.
Historic
Paul Reid’s approach during the 2004 tour to Italy, Turkey and Jordan was to register everything as he went, absorbing sights, sounds and light, then to work up the canvases later. In Petra, having captured the landscape elsewhere on the tour, Reid was keen to focus on a man he encountered there, dressed in elegant clothing, standing by the portico of Al-Khazneh, a rock-cut tomb in the historic city.
Uninhabited
Richard Foster captured the then Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall during a visit to the uninhabited North Seymour Island in the Galápagos Islands. Foster depicted the royal couple looking out to sea amid the semi-arid shoreline and the lava rock that is home to a colony of land iguanas, contrasting with the deep blue of the sea stretching out to the horizon.
Memorable
In 2023, Phillip Butah was invited to join The King and Queen on a State Visit to Kenya. As recounted in The Art of Royal Travel: Journeys with The King, the most memorable engagement for Butah was a visit to an elephant sanctuary in Nairobi National Park. Having never painted anything like it before, he wanted to recreate the weather, the noises and the elephants behaving like children, playing with each other.
Kate Heard, curator of The King’s Tour Artists said: “This fascinating group of works tells the story of forty years of official travel and artistic patronage. The freedom given to each artist to capture a personal impression of the countries visited has led to the formation of a rich and varied collection.”
The King’s Tour Artists exhibition will be included as part of a visit to the Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace, 10 July – 28 September 2025
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