King Charles’ paintings achieve record prices. Are you worth it?

In March 2024, an unfinished watercolor painted auctioned. Its title: “Punch”The artist: King Charles III. It achieved a price of the equivalent of almost 20,000 euros.

You have to indicate the overpriced picture that it is a historical document. It has a small supporting role in the children’s film from 1993, which on Charles’ children’s book “The old man of Lochnagar” based. The king and artist, who was previously known as a prince, plays the narrator in the film.

It was the time when Charles still thought was an exceptionally talented painter. In the mid -nineties, he once wrote to Lucian Freud. The Prince of Wales expressed interest in the acquisition of a joy painting and offered the joy of one of his watercolors, who was at the time, who was the largest living artist, who was the largest living artist. Freud thankfully refused.

Since then, King Charles III. Elder and wiser. Today the monarch recognizes true artistic talent and promotes the visual art in the kingdom. The Royal Drawing School in London, founded 25 years ago, offers drawing courses for beginners to art school graduates, the master’s degree there is free of charge and is one of the most coveted deals for artists on the island. Charles’ King’s Foundation also trains artists at three locations outside of London – in Dumfries House and Castle of Mey in Scotland as well as in Highmert, the private seat of the monarch in the English Cotswolds.

Charles’ interest in architecture, but less welcome, was less welcome, but less welcome in specialist circles. In terms of his devastating criticism of modern buildings – he described a planned project in the London banking district as a speech as a speech “Monstrous carbunkel on the face of a beloved, elegant friend”. In his legendary, as “Black Spider Memos” In a critical handwriting, he has known that he is well -known letters to block the construction of modern architectural projects. But even in the field, even those that Charles sharply criticized for his old -fashioned preferences at the time that he had with his holistic ideas. That he was a pioneer, if so,, if a quirk.

It’s different with painting. When Charles had only become king in October 2022 two months earlier-one of a Charles watercolor from Balmoral Castle from 2001 in the Bonham auction house, the art critic Estelle Lovatt ruled that the picture was “Not terrible. But not great either”. This shares the opinion of many experts in the kingdom. The art critic of the conservative newspaper wrote twelve years ago “Daily Telegraph”Charles’ watercolors are “so conventional that when you look at physical rigid admission”. The critic of the liberal “Guardian” Camed with sparse praise: “His pictures are average. They look like the work of a hobby painter.” You have to be a real royalist to spend money on it.

Fairyly, it should be said that Charles calls himself exactly that today: an amateur artist. He does this in this self -ironic way that only dominate the British. His limited art prints and lithographs, however, are for sale, at a price of between 3400 and 8,600 euros. The motifs of his pictures decorate silk towels that cost 170 euros there. All sales will of course benefit the King’s Foundation and other charitable purposes supported by the monarch. Nevertheless, the king is one of the most successful living artists in the kingdom today. Not bad for an average hobby painter.

In fact, a certain artistic talent seems to be in the family. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert already devoted themselves to the relaxing hobby of painting and drawing, the German Albert also also grabbed Charles’ father Prince Philip to the brush, but. He probably learned the painting where his son later fled to the world of colors, at the harsh boarding school Gordonstoun in Scotland, which was not exactly famous for subtle teachers and students.

It gets more difficult for the offspring: Prince William later only reached until studying art history. Brother Harry took off his medium -sized maturity at the private school of Eton in art – but rather because he showed even less talent for the other subjects.

Only Lady Sarah Chatto, the daughter of Princess Margaret and the photographer Lord Snowdon, now works as a recognized artist and is represented by a London gallery under her bourgeois name. However, they can only dream of the prices that achieve the pictures and art prints by Uncle Charles.

Today, the art scene with judgments about the painting of the king is back – even out of gratitude for its influential patron. Feels every second artistic facility in the kingdom bears the intentions “Royal”and members of the royal family are patrons of countless cultural organizations.

In general: What is so criticized that a monarch out of its official trips or at home to his relaxation, the color box and easier? Great Britain’s legendary Premier Winston Churchill did that, and even Boris Johnson likes to be photographed when painting. The art critic of the “Guardian” Years ago Jonathan Jones pointed out that there was a connection between tyranny and art: the Roman emperor Nero, wrote Jones, sang his own poems and had Rome burned down. Henry VIII. I composed music and let his wives mind. “And Hitler, as is well known, was a wannabe artist.”

Now King Charles is the opposite of a tyrant. As a constitutional monarch, he and his family are only modeling figures, albeit with a few more palaces than the average head of state of a western democracy. The majority of the little power he has today uses progressive concerns. And soon the man has to do a state reception for US President Donald Trump.

A consolation: Fortunately, the latter does not yet paint.