Jessie M. King was one of the best loved members of the art group The Glasgow Girls, a group of artists working from Scotland in the late 19th and early 20th century who made waves in the art scene across Europe.
More than one hundred years on, there remains a "real hunger" for King's work, according to a curator who has just put together an exhibition to display it.
King's designs became symbolic of the Glasgow Style which garnered fame as the Art Nouveau movement spread across Europe.
An internationally recognised artist, King was known for her illustrated children's books, penning more than 80 titles, as well as her talents as a jewellery maker, painter and ceramist.
This range of art styles has now been brought together in a new exhibition at Lyon & Turnbull Glasgow gallery on Bath Street, entitled The Enchanted World of Jessie M. King.
The project's inspiration came after a Glasgow Girls show was held last year and prompted a new demand from art viewers to delve more into King’s work in particular, according to Lyon & Turnbull Associate Director James McNaught, who was the curator.
"We held an exhibition of work by The Glasgow Girls last year and everyone asked about Jessie M. King. There is a real hunger for her work. That's why we decided to stage this special exhibition, borrowing from collectors and also presenting a few beautiful watercolours for sale,” explained McNaught.
The Enchanted World of Jessie M. King offers 35 artworks, bringing together a mixture of loans from private collections as well as four watercolour paintings which are up for sale.
The exhibition spans her drawings, watercolours, silver, jewellery, ceramics and books illustrated by King.
Read more: The most exciting art shows to visit in Scotland this week
The word “enchanted” in the show’s title was not chosen without meaning - much of King’s work is characterised by taking an enchanted, magical feel to it.
The Bearsden-born artist was known to maintain a belief in fairies that lasted her entire life, stemming from a supernatural experience she claimed to have as a teenager - that while she slept outdoors on a hillside in Argyll, she felt a flurry of fairies touch her.
Inspired by this belief, during the early days of her career King worked on a series of pen and ink illustrations on translucent vellum paper which usually featured imaginative figures from fairyland marked out using tiny dotted lines. These illustrations became known as Jessie’s Enchanted World.
Enrolling at the Glasgow School of Art in 1892, King rose as a stand-out student and was soon one of the key players in a new generation of progressive artists who sought out developments and new ways of doing things - a bracket of people we now look back on as the Glasgow Girls.
King was at the Art School at the same time as a number of names who would go on to be written in Glasgow’s art history books, and studied under the tuition of director Fra Newbury, who is associated with flourishing the Glasgow Style.
Contemporaries included Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife Margaret Macdonald, who met at the School in the same year that King enrolled.
The career that followed included designing fabric for Liberty & Co, the high end fashion and luxury homeware store, as well as jewellery for its Cymric silver line. At the same time, King was working her way through the 80 illustrated children’s books she published.
A turning point that propelled King into the centre of the European Avant-garde movement came in 1902 with her winning a gold medal for the cover design she did in the Turin exhibition of Decorative Art in 1902.
Along with her husband Ernest Archibald Taylor who was also a designer and writer, and their daughter, Merle, King moved to Paris in 1911. The couple quickly slotted into the community of artists and bohemians living in the French capital.
It is the work King produced while living in Paris that art historians consider to have been influential in the formation of the Art Deco movement.
Read more: Wigtown Book Festival: Discovering Scotland's stories
The outbreak of the First World War saw the family return to Scotland, where they settled in a small artists’ community in Kirkcudbright, Dumfries and Galloway and King continued to work until she passed away in 1949.
“We are thrilled to be able to show a wide range of work by her which displays her virtuosity as both artist and designer," said James McNaught.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here