Jessie Marion King (1875 – 1949) was a well-known Scottish illustrator who specialised in children’s books. She also painted pottery and crafted bookplates, jewellery, and fabric. King was a member of the Glasgow Girls, a collective of female artists.
Early Life
King was born in Bearsden, Dunbartonshire, near Glasgow, at the manor of New Kilpatrick. Her father was a Church of Scotland minister named James Wat(t)ers King, and her mother was Mary Anne Anderson. She had a strict religious upbringing and was discouraged from pursuing a career as an artist.
“Her decorative touch was usually very delicate, with precise depictions of flowers, animals, children, fairies and nursery rhymes.”
Linda Rosenkrantz
King used to hide sketches she made in school because she was afraid her mother would tear them up when she was a child. The family housekeeper, Mary McNab, was a formative influence on King and was considered as her second mother by her. As a teenager, King had a supernatural encounter in Argyll when she fell asleep on a hillside and felt the presence of fairies, which she continued to believe existed.
Biography
In 1899, King was appointed as Tutor in Book Decoration and Design at Glasgow School of Art. She taught before her marriage to E. A. Taylor in 1908, and she decided to retain her maiden name going against the grain.
Original designs
Art Nouveau-inspired King at the time and her works have a similar mood to The Glasgow Fours. Despite Art Nouveau’s influence, she was inspired to produce original designs that did not literalise the real world. “I refused to copy sketches,” she said, “but insisted on drawing from my imagination.” She created extensive pen and ink drawings on vellum during her early years.
King’s early works mainly consisted of drawing, but she also wrote books and was a professional jeweller. Some consider her first and best designs for the covers of books published by Globus Verlag in Berlin between 1899 and 1902. The publisher was a subsidiary of Wertheim’s, a respected Berlin department store. Georg Wertheim, the publisher, asked her to create “a collection of products in the ‘new Scottish Theme.’ She worked on the covers of over 100 books and other magazines, illustrating, writing, decorating, and designing them.
Tour of Germany and Italy
In 1902, she went on a Grand Tour of Germany and Italy, where she was inspired by Botticelli’s work. Her binding for “L’Evangile de L’Enfance” received a gold medal at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin the same year. Since there was no provision for an award to be won by a “Signora,” the resulting certificate was made out to “Signor Jessie Marion King.”
King was elected to the Glasgow Society of Artists’ committee in 1903, as well as the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists (1905). Her contribution to Art Nouveau peaked during her first exhibits, at Glasgow’s Annan’s Gallery (1907) and London’s Bruton Street Galleries (1908).
King and her husband moved to Salford in 1908, where their only child, Merle Elspeth, was born in 1909; Mary McNab joined the family, allowing King to continue working. The couple honeymooned on Arran, where they later rented out cottages in High Corrie to run a summer painting and sketching academy.
Move to Paris
They moved to Paris in 1910, where Taylor had been appointed as a professor at Ernest Percyval Tudor-Studios. Hart’s The Sheiling Atelier School in Paris was founded by King and Taylor in 1911. Her work in Paris is credited with influencing the development of the Art Deco movement. In 1915, King and Taylor relocated to Kirkcudbright, where she worked until her death.
Sources
Byars, M., & Riley, T. (2004). The design encyclopedia. Laurence King Publishing.
Wikipedia contributors. (2021, March 21). Jessie M. King. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:00, March 31, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jessie_M._King&oldid=1013439753
More Illustrators
-
Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939) – Moravian decorator and painter
Alphonse Mucha (1860 – 1939) was a Moravian decorator, painter, and graphic artist. In the 1890s and early 1900s, Mucha is well known for his Art Nouveau posters, particularly those of Sarah Bernhardt. Mucha first designed stage sets in Vienna; moved to Munich, in 1885 and Paris in 1887.Read More →
-
Walther Klemm: The Master of Monochromatic Woodblock Prints
Walther Klemm (1883-1957), a German painter, printmaker, and illustrator, was known for his monochromatic woodblock prints, particularly of animals. This article delves into Klemm’s life, from his early years in Karlsbad to his recognition at the Vienna Secession Exhibition and his professorship at the University of Fine Arts in Weimar. Celebrated for his unique interpretation…
-
Keith Haring Artwork (1958 – 1990) – art that danced
Keith Haring was best known for his graffiti-like painting, initially on the black paper used to cover discontinued billboard advertisements in the New York subway. After after a feverish 1980’s style career of surging popular success and grudging critical attention, Haring died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 31.Read More →
-
Gertrude Hermes (1902 – 1983) British Illustrator, Sculptor & Designer
Gertrude Anna Bertha Hermes was born in Bickley, Kent, on August 18, 1901. Louis August Hermes and Helene, née Gerdes, were from Altena, Germany, near Dortmund. She attended the Beckenham School of Art in around 1921. She then enrolled in Leon Underwood’s Brook Green School of Painting and Sculpture in 1922, where she met Eileen…
-
Clare Veronica Leighton: Bridging Nations Through Wood Engravings
Clare Veronica Leighton, a significant 20th-century British wood engraver, stained glass designer, and writer, was born in England but became an American in 1945. She was known for her rural subjects and influenced many Canadian artists. Leighton created figurative wood engravings and illustrations for mass production, contributing to books like Wuthering Heights and The Farmer’s…
-
Duane Bryers (1911 – 2012) – Pinup artist – naughty but nice
One of my favourite pinup artists was Minnesota born Duane Bryers, creator of the famous Hilda, a pleasingly, popular and plump pinup girl. Bryers’ background was as interesting as his illustrations. Born in northern Michigan, he excelled at acrobatics as a child. His family moved to Virginia, Minnesota, at 12 and he soon had the…
-
George Barbier one of the Great French Illustrators
George Barbier was one of the Great French Illustrators of the early 20th centuryRead More →
-
Paul Iribe (1883 – 1935) French Designer and Illustrator
Paul Iribe was a French designer and illustrator known for his contributions to the Art Deco movement. Iribe’s modernism was influenced by 19th-century luxury, and he wrote a manifesto against modern art.Read More →
-
George Sheringham (1884 – 1937) British Interior designer
He was born in London and had a brother, Hugh, an Angling Editor of The Field. He attended the King’s School, Gloucester, the Slade School of Fine Art (1899–1901), and the Sorbonne, Paris (1904–1906).Read More →
-
Theodor Kittelsen (1857 – 1914) Norwegian Ceramicist and Book Illustrator
In the early 1900s, he was a designer for Porsgrunds Porselaensfabrik, Porsgrunn. In 1882 Kittelsen was granted a state scholarship to study in Paris. In 1887 he returned to Norway for good. When back in Norway, he found nature to be a great inspiration. He spent the next two years in Lofoten, where he lived…
-
Hattie Stewart’s doodle-bombing
Hattie Stewart is a London-based painter and illustrator. Her tongue-in-cheek artwork glides smoothly between various creative sectors, including Fashion, Music, and Contemporary Art, despite the fact that she is best known for ‘doodlebombing’ over influential Magazines.Read More →
-
The Supercharged Art Of Walter Molino
Walter Molino was born in 1915 and died in 1997 at age 82. He began working professionally as an illustrator and caricaturist in 1935 for a newspaper and two children’s magazines, followed by a satirical magazine and several comic strip series.Read More →
-
Yoshitomo Nara (b.1959) Japanese Artist and Designer
Nara grew up in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, about 300 miles north of the Tochigi Prefecture. His exposure to Western music on the American military radio station Far East Network in Honshu influenced his artistic imagination early. Later, he would provide cover art for bands including Shonen Knife, R.E.M., and Bloodthirsty Butchers.Read More →
-
Tom Ngo’s Architectural Absurdity
“Common sense and conventional practice prohibit the evolution of architecture.” This is the first quote you find reading Tom Ngo’s Master’s thesis: The Dinner Address, A Venture into Architectural Absurdity. Read More →
-
Jessie Marion King (1875 – 1949) Scottish illustrator of children’s books
Jessie Marion King (1875 – 1949) was a well-known Scottish illustrator who specialised in children’s books. She also painted pottery and crafted bookplates, jewellery, and fabric. King was a member of the Glasgow Girls, a collective of female artists.Read More →
-
Mr.Otter’s Practice Travels: Illustrations by Simon Lee
Cute illustrations of a traveling otter and his many adventures by Beijing-based artist Simon Lee . The style of the illustrations remind me of the woodblock prints (Ukiyo-e) of Ando Hiroshige (1797–1858). Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries.Read More →
-
André Lhote (1885 – 1962) French Artist and Illustrator
Lhote was born 5 July 1885 in Bordeaux, France, and learned wood carving and sculpture from the age of 12, when his father apprenticed him to a local furniture maker to be trained as a sculptor in wood. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux in 1898 and studied decorative sculpture until 1904.Read…
-
Beautiful Butterfly & Moth Illustrations from Dru Drury 1837
Dru Drury (4 February 1724 – 15 December 1803) was a British collector of natural history specimens and an entomologist. He had samples collected from across the world through a network of ship’s officers and collectors, including Henry Smeathman. Read More →
-
Illustrator reimagines Disney princesses as modern career women
Matt Burt – a North Carolina-based graphic designer decided to do a new take on the classic Disney princesses by redrawing them as hard-working modern career women.Read More →
-
Alma Haser – Within 15 Minutes
Within 15 Minutes – The average time between twins when they are born Alma Haser has always found identical twins fascinating, as do most people. It is the incredible realisation that there are two versions of the exact same person, hard to tell apart, unless they wear different clothes or hairstyles…Read More →
You may also be interested in
Bruce J. Talbert (1838-1881) British architect and designer – Encyclopedia of Design
Bruce J. Talbert (1838-1881) was a British architect and designer. He was born in Dundee, Scotland. He was apprenticed to cabinet-carver Millar and subsequently to Charles Edwards, an architect in Dundee, who worked on the Corn Exchange Hall. In 1856, he settled in Glasgow, working in W.H. Tait and Cambell Douglas’s architecture office.
Evelyn Wyld (1882 – 1973) British Designer textiles and rugs – Encyclopedia of Design
Evelyn Wyld (1882 – 1972) was a British designer who was born in 1882. She studied at the Royal College of Music, London. She settled in Paris in c1907. She and Eileen Gray travelled to North Africa, where they learned weaving and wool dyeing with natural colours from Arab women.
Edward William Godwin (1833 – 1886) British architect and furniture designer – Encyclopedia of Design
Edward William Godwin (1833 – 1886) was a British architect and designer. He was born in the city of Bristol. He began his career designing in mid-Victorian Britain’s strongly polychromatic “Ruskinian Gothic” style, inspired by The Stones of Venice, and then transitioned to the “Anglo-Japanese taste” of the Aesthetic Movement and Whistler’s circle in the 1870s.
Comments are closed, but trackbacks and pingbacks are open.