Jo King was born in Buckinghamshire, the son of professional painters. After graduating in 1981 from Dartington College of Arts with a BA in Theatre, he moved to the Netherlands and worked as a cabaret entertainer. Returning to the UK in 1989, he commenced an eight-year period of working for the mask and puppet company Horse & Bamboo, directed by painter Bob Frith. In 1998 King began attending life drawing sessions run by Bohuslav Barlow in Todmorten, Lancashire. Since that time the human form has always been the dominant subject of his work.
Subsequently Jo King moved to Spain, and this was followed by eight years in the Dutch town of Zaltbommel.
In 2018 he returned to the UK, where he now has a studio in the village of Constantine, near Falmouth.
After obtaining a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from St Martins Bath Academy, Dorrie King studied for her PGCE at Bretton Hall, and went on to attain her MA at Leeds University. A 30-year career in art education followed, and on her retirement from Leeds Arts University, she moved to Cornwall.
Dorrie has developed her own form of printmaking and has also worked with glass.
Her work has been widely exhibited in the UK and abroad. During lockdown she participated in a printmaking competition which toured nationally and internationally. Her submission 'A Nod to Naum' was inspired by the Gabo exhibition at Tate St Ives, and was shown at the Moscow Print Workshop in 2021. She considered this 'the perfect destination' for her homage to this Russian artist.
Born in Cornwall, the artist trained first as an engineer before turning to art, and exhibited in London, Manchester and Paris. He lived at 'Westbourne', St Austell, but had a studio in Plymouth. Some of his work was purchased by King Edward VII.
A correspondent (2023) has told us of a painting by this artist in his possession, entitled 'Barton Farm, Pentewan'.
London-born painter King exhibited at NAG in November of 1897 with her Sketch, St Erth, and a painting - Summer - in July 1898. Her return addresses, in notes to Henry Meynell RHEAM (acting as Secretary to the NSA and therefore Sales manager for the exhibitions), indicate that she was living at Bay View House, West Pentire Nr Newquay in 1898, and visited at Primrose Cottage, St Erth in September of that same year. Her correspondence concerns prices of her paintings and notifications for re-hangs at the gallery.
She also signed the Glanville letter from artists protesting against impending re-developments in St Ives in November 1898, and Whybrow notes her presence in the St Ives colony, indicated by one title being Fishing Boats, St Ives. (This may be the same artist, listed as Miss B KING, living in Bristol and exhibiting at the RBA in 1902.)
Wood further notes a Miss Bertha KING exhibiting a painting of wild parsley at the RA in 1900 from an address in Shoreham, Kent. She is also found exhibiting from Sevenoaks nearby that same year, and from Redlands, Bristol in 1901 at the RBA. By 1911 she was married and living in the E Transvaal, South Africa. In 1921, her exhibiting address was in Harpington, Herts, exhibiting at the RA twice and the Goupil Gallery at least once in the name of Bertha EVERARD.
His painting, Sale of Herrings, graces the front cover of Tovey's exhaustive study (2009) of the social history of St Ives (1860-1930) The Artists and the Community, A Social History. The Public Catalogue Foundation gives the title St Ives Fish Market for this same painting. It now hangs in the Guildhall, St Ives.
King's primary address was a moving one for exhibition purposes, and he exhibited regularly at the RA (54), hence his list of titles is long. Tovey suggests that his visit to St Ives which produced the aforementioned painting was brief. His other addresses, as identified by J&G, are in London (1884 & 1908), Petersfield, Hants (1886), St Ives, Cornwall (1895), Fordingbridge, Hants (1897), Broadstone, Dorset (1898), Parkstone, Dorset (1906) and East Molesey, Surrey (1916).
King was born in Oundle Northamptonshire and came to St Ives in 1985. His late wife was Brenda KING, also an artist. His studies in art were at Lancaster College of Arts & Craft, and at London University Institute of Education.
From teaching painting and pottery he took up full-time painting, and worked in Spain, Paris, and at the Curwen Studio, St Ives.
Jeremy King died in 2020.
Peter King was born in Leicester and has travelled extensively. He lives in Cornwall where he teaches oil and watercolour painting.
Brenda King was born in Cumbria. She studied at Lancaster College of Art from 1950 to 1954 and at the Royal College of Art from 1954 to 1957. Whilst living near London she exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. In the 1960s and 70s she had regular shows in the South East before moving to Cornwall in 1975.
Brenda’s paintings are in the faux-naïve style that found many followers in the late twentieth century in West Cornwall. The composition of a table-top with crockery in front of window looking out on a coastal scene echoes a famous painting by Ben Nicholson in the 1940s. Her style is strongly influenced by the Bristol-born artist Mary Fedden OBE (1915-2012). Brenda’s paintings have been exhibited widely in recent years, across the West Country as well as internationally, as far afield as Tokyo.' [Eleven and a Half Gallery, London']
The late artist wife of Jeremy KING. The couple had their working studios at St Just, and Brenda exhibited locally in galleries such as the Rainyday Gallery in Penzance, as well as much further afield.
Joan Kinghorn is an artist and photographer who moved to Cornwall in 1987. She develops her work through observational drawing and experimentation with watercolour, acrylic and oils. The resulting pieces have a touch of abstraction and always convey the felt experience of the subject. She has exhibited at the Camel Valley Gallery, and also shows her work with the Boscastle Group.
Alongside her painting practice, she is an adult education tutor, teaching 'A' Level art. In 2016 Joan Kinghorn became a member of Taking Space, a group of women artists living and working in Cornwall.
Kingsbury was born in London, and began to paint in oils from the age of nine. He obtained a BA (Hons) in Psychology from the University of Wales in 1982, where he also studied art history. Continuing the latter subject in London, he then took up a student internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice (1983), subsequently working as a cataloguer for Bonhams Fine Art in London.
After another long visit in Venice (1986) concentrating on painting architecture, he moved to Scotland, where he remained for five years.
From Dumfriesshire, he came to west Cornwall in 1991, where he now lives with his wife, the abstract painter Morag BALLARD, and their two children.
During the 1990s Kingsbury enjoyed a succession of solo shows at Francis Kyle Gallery in London, and more recently has been represented by Panter & Hall, also in the capital. His work is shown annually at the Royal West of England Academy, and he has also exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, The New English Art Club and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
The Kingsley Weavers were a group made up of D and I Turner and F and L Welch. They created exhibition pieces in hand-weaving to display at the NAG Pictures and Crafts Exhibition from 12 July to 22 September in 1928.
Nothing further is known about the future of the group.
Alan Kingwell has been a professional artist since 1985. He was one of the runners-up in the Daily Mail's 'Not the Turner Prize'. His work has been exhibited in galleries in the west country, London and throughout Ireland.
He has formed a small group of Cornish artists known as 'West Country Artists'.
After obtaining an MA at the Royal College of Art, Susan Kinley moved to Cornwall in the 1990s to take up a fellowship at Falmouth University. At the heart of her art practice is a drive and commitment to making works which cross boundaries of disciplines, materials and processes, and respond to particular places across time. She says: 'My wall panels and installations are overlays of places, ideas and experiences, fused together in unexpected ways. Each work tells a visual story of memory, visits to particular wild places and changes across days, months and centuries.'
Kinley's work has been exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. She has been granted awards from the Arts Council England, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and the David Canter Memorial Fund. Her many commissions have included the British Embassy in Dublin, the Met Office and Penlee House Art Gallery & Museum.
Rachael Kinmond studied Contemporary Crafts at Falmouth University, graduating in 2016 with a BA (Hons), alongside the 'Outstanding Studentship' award. In 2021 she completed her MA in Fine Art at Plymouth College of Art. She has exhibited at the Fish Factory Art Space in Penryn, and has twice been a monthly studio resident at the Terrace Gallery, Penryn.
Lincoln Kirby Bell was born in South Australia, where he studied ceramics, continuing his art education in London. He has worked, studied and taught in Central America, and has exhibited throughout Australia.
From his studio in Newlyn, he produces mainly hand thrown functional tableware in brightly coloured or striking blue-and-white designs.
Ida Kirkpatrick studied art at the Royal Female School of Art and also at the Academie Julian in Paris, and was one of two sister artists (Ethel KIRKPATRICK being her sibling) visiting in St Ives in the 1890s. It is suggested, that aside from the various artists the sisters may have met in Paris who also visited the Cornish artist colonies, they may also have been visiting an Irish-born relative, Lily KIRKPATRICK, who had made her home in St Ives from 1894.
The sisters were also regular visitors to Polperro during the 1890s.
Ida Marion Kirkpatrick was the eldest daughter of Thomas Sutton Kirkpatrick of Coolmine, Dublin (1833-1895) and Mary Anne Rosa Marriott of Paddington, London. Her mother having been sent back in her pregnancy to England from India (Army Service of father), due to a cholera epidemic, Ida was born in St Helier, Jersey, Channel Islands, at her grandmother Marriott's home.
On leaving the Army, her father entered the Government Prison Service as a Deputy Governor (Cold Bath Fields Prison, Clerkenwell), where their second child, Ethel Alice KIRKPATRICK was born. From 1878 the family lived in Exeter, Devon, where their father was the Governor of Exeter Prison. From there they moved back to London as TSK took on the governorship of Newgate Prison, and then ultimately Wormwood Scrubs.
In preparation for retirement from HM Prison Service (1892), the Kirkpatricks built a new home for the family at Harrow on the Hill (The Gables) and this is the address that Ida and Ethel used as their exhibiting/sending address, though it is evident from reports and guest lists that they also visited St Ives with some regularity. In 1895, the year their father also died, a large studio was built behind the main house at The Gables, where the remaining family continued to live. Ida and her sister Ethel also maintained visiting ties for over twenty years with the art colony of Walberswick, as recorded in Painting at the Edge.
During her career Ida Kirkpatrick exhibited frequently at the Alpine Club Gallery and with the Society of Women Artists, but also at the RA (6) and elsewhere. Her titles include A Cornish Quay and The Pier Lamp, indicating that Cornwall was reflected in her work. The artist died at Harrow in 1950.
A correspondent (2020) has been in touch to tell us of a watercolour by Ida Kirkpatrick in her possession, entitled 'St Ives' and dated 1904. A further correspondent in 2020 has advised us of two paintings by Kirkpatrick inherited from his grandparents. And in the same year we have heard of a portrait of a correspondent's great-grandfather by this artist.
Two Kirkpatrick sisters spent time in St Ives in the 1890s, and Ethel was the younger. She had the distinction of being born in Cold Bath Fields Prison, Clerkenwell, London where her father was the resident prison governor. Ida KIRKPATRICK (1866-1950), was her sister and further biographical information about the family can be found in her entry. Both sisters were exhibiting artists. Ethel outlived her sister Ida by 16 years.
Ethel studied at the RA Schools. She also attended London's Central School of Arts and Crafts in 1899, where she studied enamelling and woodcut, the latter presumably under Frank Morley Fletcher. She and her sister are also known to have been students at Academie Julian in Paris, before coming to St Ives for intermittent visits. They were also regular visitors to Polperro during the 1890s. Ethel produced paintings and woodcut work in colour, exhibiting frequently at the Alpine Club Gallery and with the Society of Women Artists, among other venues.
In addition to the time spent in St Ives, Ethel and Ida associated themselves with the arts colony at Walberswick, with visits over a twenty year period. Recent research by Charles Clarke has established that a colour woodcut by Ethel entitled 'Mounts Bay' was illustrated in 'The Studio' of 1917, indicating that she did work in Cornwall.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, Lily studied in Paris and lived in Carbis Bay and St Ives. She suffered frequently from ill health and lived with a sister, who looked after her 'like a mother hen' (Havelock Ellis, in My Life). The sisters had independent means, and did not rely on their work for their living. The Census of 1901 names her accompanying sister as Isabella, when they were staying with relatives in Edgbaston, Birmingham.
An exact relationship to the artists Ida and Ethel KIRKPATRICK, who visited St Ives in the 1890s, is as yet unproven, though the latter are not sisters of Lily. [This is an update on Tovey 2009]. The name given to their cottage on Talland Road shows there is a family link to Ida and Ethel, however, as other members of their wider family have traditionally employed this title for their homes.
Lily was an active member of the St Ives Artists Club and a talented pianist. She was a good friend and love-partner of the writer Edith Ellis (Mrs Havelock Ellis), and their relationship is referenced in HE's autobiography in some detail.
The sisters took a lease from Thomas Millie DOW on a property on Talland Road which they called 'Closeburn' (a reference to an original family seat, Closeburn Castle, of the Kirkpatricks in Scotland) and is now called 'The Cottage'. That lease was effective from 1893 through to 1906, (Tovey, p42) when Isabella ceased being the ratepayer. Rock Studio at The Warren was used for Lily's working purposes. She exhibited at her first Show Day in 1895, with an oil painting An Old Score.
Tovey in his social history of the St Ives arts colony (2009), The Artists and the Community 1860-1930, includes a b&w plate of Lily's painting, The Duet (1899) (p63), and a lovely photograph of her taken shortly before her death from Bright's Disease in 1902 (p97).
Based in north Cornwall, Margo Kirkwood is a member of the Cornwall Watercolour Society. Her work has been exhibited widely in Cornwall, and in Plymouth.
Linda Kitchen studied Graphic Design at London's Royal College of Art, moving to Cornwall in 2006. She collects discarded objects from the beach, transforming them into sculptures.
Nichola Kite's images originate from a fascination with the interplay between human experience and the environment. She works from Krowji Studios in Redruth.
The artist was born (11 October) in Taunton, Devon, the son of a local chemist and his wife. After reaching his majority, he worked in a London studio for a brief period under William P Frith, before leaving England to study in Antwerp (1881) and then in 1883 he continued his studies at the Academie Julian in Paris, under Bouguereau and Laurens. After visiting Normandy and Pont Aven with the Irish painter Roderic O'Conor, he returned in 1891 to the Academie Julian to study with Lefebvre and Benjamin Constant. Tovey, in his research summary (unpublished) states that from 1900 he regularly spent the winter in Concarneau, and visited the artist colonies in Cornwall. No dates have been discovered for these visits to St Ives or Newlyn, but a series of paintings of children on beaches are taken to be indicative of time spent in the county.
Between 1886 and 1908 he exhibited widely at the RA, RBA, RBSA, Liverpool, Manchester and the Paris Salon amongst other places where he worked. The known venues where he worked included St Ives, Cornwall, Pont Aven, Concarneau, Grez-sur-Loing, Morocco, Spain and the USA. In the USA, like a number of Cornish painters, he exhibited at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania (1905).
Milner Kite died on 5 July 1945, having survived two world wars, at Millau, Aveyron, South of France at the age of 82. The Milner Kite Scholarship, set up posthumously by his brother and shared between the Royal College of Art and the Slade School, enables one student each summer to study in France.
Claude Kitto was born in Fowey and raised in the West Country. He studied at Bath and Gloucester Schools of Art and went on to serve in the Western Desert during the Second World War. Kitto exhibited at the Royal West of England Academy, the ROI and the Royal Academy. His work is also represented in the permanent collection of Plymouth Art Gallery. During the 1980s he had a series of solo shows in London.
Based in St Neot, around that time he also worked in St Ives, and was president of the East Cornwall Society of Artists. Subsequently he settled in Wembury, Devon. His fine watercolours, mainly of boatyards, were under-rated during his lifetime.
Noted as 'a young Swedish artist who has gained fame for her black and white studies', a show of her work at the V&A, London in 1923 related to religious symbolism and Balinese images. Hailing from Stockholm, where she was active between 1900-30, de Kleen was introduced in St Ives to STIAC by the artist Robert Langley HUTTON.
Knapping studied under E Aubrey Hunt in England, and in France and Belgium, and is listed in Benezit as being from Blackheath. Her first exhibition in Cornwall was with the RCPS in 1897, the picture having a St Ives title. In 1905 she took over William Holt Yates TITCOMB's Piazza studio when he left St Ives, purchasing the freehold of the entire block in 1920.
She was an exhibitor in the 1911 Show Day in St Ives, and later in the Show Day of 1924 when she showed several oils, one still life of tulips, a maritime scene entitled St Ives Harbour, and another termed 'a nocturne' - all 'decoratively treated' (St Ives Times).
A member of the Women's International Arts Club, she also designed Christmas cards and illustrated children's magazines. A keen golfer, she divided her time between St Ives and her house in Sloane Street, London. A much respected artist, on her death she bequeathed the Piazza studios to the RBA, in the hope it would remain artist studios.
The daughter of the landscape painter Joseph Knight, Clara Knight married a fellow artist, Frank Beswick. They lived at Deganwy on the Conwy estuary in Wales. Her exhibits during the 1920s and 1930s at RCA, of which she was elected a full member in 1926, reflected frequent trips to Cornwall.
Born in Nottingham, the son of architect and sometime painter, William Knight, Harold won a travelling scholarship while at the Nottingham School of Art, allowing him to study at the Academie Julian under Laurens and Constant. After marrying Laura JOHNSON, a fellow student at Nottingham in 1903, the couple lived mainly in Staithes, but also made several trips to Holland, where Harold became interested in the farming subjects and interiors of simple peasant living, handling these in the manner of the HAGUE SCHOOL of artists.
Harold and Laura KNIGHT moved to Lamorna, Cornwall and lived at Oakhill from 1907-18. There he continued to paint genre subjects, but with a lighter palette, and also painted a number of sitters in Cornwall, including Mornie KERR, Blote Munnings (Florence CARTER-WOOD), and Ella Louise NAPER, the latter for whom he cared deeply.
In 1910 he sold his first painting at NAG, Prayer, and in 1914 he exhibited for the first time at the Paris Salon (Un bohemien).
World War I proved to be a divisive time for the Lamorna community. Harold was a conscientious objector and made his views clear. His health was not good and initially his age precluded him from active service. But in spring of 1918 the conscription age was lowered. When he was called up, he appeared before the West Penwith Tribunal and was exempted from duty on condition that he should carry out agricultural work, which he did, until he was released in the spring of 1919. The experience took his toll on his health and the couple decided that they could no longer endure the hostility from some of their friends and neighbours, and so moved to London to further their careers.
In the capital he continued as a portrait painter of the well-known figures in society and politics of the period, and in 1925 received a Silver Medal for his portrait of Ethel Bartlett at the Paris Salons. The couple were to become the first husband and wife members of the RA in the history of the Academy. Harold pre-deceased Laura by some nine years.