A lifelong passion

He describes himself as merely an enthusiastic amateur, but the Prince of Wales’s watercolours are respected in the art world. By Lucy Davies

He calls himself an ‘enthusiastic amateur’, but Lucy Davies admires the work of Prince Charles, watercolourist

THE SILK-PAPERED walls of Sandringham, Balmoral and Windsor creak with the weight of Rembrandts, Vermeers, Holbeins and da Vincis. So it isn’t surprising that over the centuries, senior members of the Royal family have occasionally tried their hand at painting. Queen Victoria was particularly keen, as is her great-great-greatgrandson, the Prince of Wales, whose works are seen here.

‘It would have been wonderful to grow up among that art,’ says the artist Catherine Goodman, with whom the Prince founded the Royal Drawing School in 2000. ‘His lifelong passion stems from there.’

The Prince was taught by some of Britain’s finest artists, including John Napper, John Ward, Hugh Casson, Edward Seago and Derek Hill. He favours watercolour and painting en plein air. A preference for washes of colour suits his finishing each work in one sitting, though he has said in the past that he often fails to do so because he becomes embarrassed at keeping his security detail waiting for too long.

His paintings often capture places that are familiar to him – the salmon-rich pool at Helmsdale, for instance, where he enjoys fishing, and views around Balmoral.

Though he describes himself as merely ‘an enthusiastic amateur’, in fact the Prince is an honorary member of the Royal Academy and the Royal Watercolour Society. A report in 2016 showed he had sold copies of his watercolour paintings worth £2 million since 1997. He has, says Goodman, ‘an enormously creative spirit’.

These images are published with the kind permission of HRH The Prince of Wales