Details

Object type

painting

Title

The Frog Prince

Artist/Maker

Jessie Marion King artist

Culture/School

Scottish; British; Glasgow Style

Date

1913

Materials

oil on panel

Dimensions

image: 355 mm x 677 mm; framed 525 mm x 849 mm x 55 mm

Description

Oil on panel titled ‘The Frog Prince’ by Jessie Marion King, 1913.

In 1913, whilst living, working and teaching in Paris, King was invited to display work at the exhibition ‘Art for Children’ at the city’s Musée Galliera. She designed ‘A Modern Nursery’; an entire nursery interior, with toys, a doll’s house (now in the collection of the V&A), child-size furniture, a rocking horse named 'Brightling' and a leaded-glass window with a woodpecker design. This panel was one of four panel paintings that lined the walls above bookcases and told the fairy tale of The Frog Prince. A French critic wrote upon seeing her room 'One longs to become a child again'.

Paris gave King many opportunities. There she was introduced to the technique of batik, which, suiting her freer, painterly style, became a passion, a commercial success and influenced her illustrative style. Mimicking the effect of drawing with a wax resist and working with bright coloured dyes she began to draw lines in white – an absence of line – between a bolder use of blocks of colour.

Credit Line/Donor

Purchased from Barclay Lennie Fine Art Ltd, with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund, 2004

ID Number

E.2005.1.53

Location

Kelvingrove Picture Promenade