British artist Mark King was born in Bombay in 1931 and brought up in India until his sixteenth year, and the last days of the British Raj. After completing his studies in botany and art at La Martiniere College in Calcutta, King attended the Bournemouth College of Art in England, where his focus was painting, sculpture, architecture, and theater design. After some time spent working in theater design at the Oxford Playhouse Theatre and the Scottish National Opera, King decided to turn his energies to painting full time and moved to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and the Louvre.

In 1960s Paris, King worked as a plein air painter, capturing the effects of light and color with a sophisticated eye and a skilled hand. After a move to the United States in the late ’60s, he continued to paint beautiful scenes of the Parisian streets from memory. Rather than concentrating on message or novelty in his art, King strives to attain a more “virtuoso command of [his] medium” and so he has studied the great masters: Cimabue, Goya, Turner, Degas, and Bonnard.

Following in the tradition of the Impressionists, King paints the exotic and the familiar with brio and drama. His subjects range from the aforementioned Parisian street scenes to fox hunts, the big game and wildlife of India, horse racing, and tranquil landscapes, all drawn from vast experience and a life lived across three continents.

King continued to contribute beautiful and engaging art to the world until his death in 2014.