In the garden of Highgrove, the King’s private residence in Gloucestershire, there used to stand a 200-year-old Cedar of Lebanon tree. It is said that its majesty was part of the great appeal for the King when he purchased Highgrove in 1980, and he was saddened when it became diseased and had to be felled in 2007. Now, the tree is coming to life in a limited-edition lithograph based on the King’s original 1995 watercolour, A View from the Wildflower Meadow, which has been created to raise funds for the King’s Foundation and which features Highgrove in all its glory – particularly its wildflower meadow. "It’s one of the key parts of the garden, because it’s all about the importance of living in harmony with nature," explains Scott Simpson, group retail and brand manager, whose job it is to select the artworks for sale and present them to the King – who Scott describes as "a prolific artist" with "impeccable taste".
Hello! was exclusively invited to see the lithographs being created at Worton Hall in southwest London, formerly part of the Isleworth Film Studios. Here, the King is among such artists as Peter Blake and Damien Hirst whose artworks are painstakingly duplicated using ink by the Curwen Studio, which has been working with the monarch since the 1990s after he met its founder, the renowned printmaker Stanley Jones.
His Majesty’s pictures are revealing, says Gregory Day, the director of the Curwen Studio. "Most art is quite therapeutic, and you can sort of see that with the [art] works. There’s a tranquility in those paintings of the landscapes and the house. I think he’s very much into nature, and a lot of the ones I’ve seen, especially in Scotland, are very moody and beautiful; lots of gorseland and some really open spaces. Whenever you come across a scene like that, you want to stop and try and record it. I think there’s moments in his life [where] he’s stopped."
Transforming A View from the Wildflower Meadow into a lithograph, which will have a limited run of 100 prints, takes about two to three weeks, Greg explains. The process, which uses ink to replicate the image, is painstaking; printers Anna and Marcus must colour match the ink and ensure that any unique details are included. Then, the full run is sent back to Highgrove to be signed by the King.
While every element of the prints are special – including the frames, which are created by framers local to Highgrove in nearby Tetbury – what makes the run even more so is that the funds raised from each print (which are on sale for £3,500), go into the King’s Foundation, the charity established by the King to promote harmony between people, places and the planet through educational programmes and community-focused projects to create a more sustainable future.
While the charity’s headquarters is at Dumfries House in Scotland, Highgrove has also become a heartland for its work. It offers workshops and programmes based on heritage craft skills, including at the Snowdon School of Furniture and via specialist embroidery and millinery courses run in partnership with Chanel and le19M.
"A big part of what we do at the Foundation is teaching these traditional skills, whether it's in the arts or in the craft sector, so that they are protected for future generations and so they exist," says its communications director Izzy Stephenson. "That's what the King is really passionate about."