Buckingham Palace exhibits King Charles' Royal Tours in New Exhibition

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 over 100 illustrations, it tells the behind-the-scenes stories of the tours from an unrivalled perspective.

In the spring of 1985, the then Prince of Wales invited, at his own expense, 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.

Reflecting His Majesty’s longstanding patronage of the arts, 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 in 1962 and 1963 and long 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. Ward never carried a camera but always a small sketchbook to record whatever was before him, and the work From the Afterdeck of HMY Britannia captures a moment of rest, often infrequent due to the pace of overseas tours.

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. The tour would be the last for the Royal Yacht, which was decommissioned later that year.

The pace of the tour to Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Jamaica in 2000 took Mary Anne Aytoun Ellis by surprise, with the first stop in Trinidad and Tobago passing so quickly it was challenging to put brush to canvas. Seeing that a planned expedition to the Kaieteur Falls in Guyana had been allocated just fifteen minutes, Aytoun Ellis asked to travel ahead so that she could have time to paint. On approach, the thunder of the waterfall could be heard before it appeared through a break in the trees.

Anticipating the fast-paced nature of royal tours, with several engagements taking place in different locations each day, 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. 

For Colin Watson, an experienced traveller who joined the tour to Japan, Brunei and Indonesia in 2008, travelling away from his home in Belfast had often been a source of inspiration. To witness ancient cultures firsthand during the visit was the fulfilment of a long-held dream, reflected in his work The Abbot, who he observed in the Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan. The Todaiji Temple is one of Japan’s most famous and historically significant temples, dating back more than 1,000 years, and the abbot is the spiritual head of the temple complex.

Richard Foster joined the 11-day tour to Chile, Brazil and Ecuador in 2009. A well-established artist who was known primarily as a portrait painter, he took the opportunity to capture 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. 

Luke Martineau was invited to join a four-day royal tour to India in 2010, for the opening of the XIX Commonwealth Games. Keen not to miss opportunities, he carefully studied the itinerary to plan ahead, ensuring there was time to respond to scenes unfolding before him, such as the sunset on the lake next to Balsamand Palace, bathing it in light. He later noted that the trip formed a major inspiration for his future work.

In 2023, Phillip Butah was invited to join The King and Queen on a State Visit to Kenya, hosted by President William Ruto, having first met His Majesty in 1998 when he became the youngest-ever winner of the Prince of Wales’s Young Artists’ Award. 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.

When Warwick Fuller joined the royal visit to Australia and Samoa in 2024, the most recent tour to be represented in the exhibition, it was his fourth tour as the official artist. Familiar with the relentless pace of royal tours, while in Canberra Fuller went straight to the Australian National Botanic Gardens, where the events of the day were to conclude. On arrival, he was directed to the location of the waratahs, which had been spotted in full springtime bloom beside a mature eucalyptus. The waratah plant, native to eastern Australia and related to the ancient Protea group of plants, has long held significance in Indigenous Australian culture. Its ability to survive bush fires and regenerate links it to sentiments of strength and resilience. 

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. Encompassing landscapes, figure studies and still life subjects, these works are testament to His Majesty’s deep engagement with and encouragement of artists over the past four decades.’

The Earl of Rosslyn (Lord Steward and Personal Secretary to The King and Queen), who conceived and edited The Art of Royal Travel: Journeys with The King, said: ‘By inviting an artist to join a royal tour in 1985, The King started a tradition that has continued unbroken to the current day. Some were at the start of their careers, others more established, but when interviewed for this book all were united in gratitude for the memorable artistic adventure it represented, knowing also that they were working for someone in sympathy with the artistic craft, a patron of the arts and a passionate advocate for cultural life.’

Main Image: Phillip Butah, Elephant Sanctuary, 2023 © Phillip Butah. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust.