Jessie Marion King - A Versatile Artist and Educator

by Tolovaj

Jessie Marion King was a prolific Scottish artist and designer who worked in dozens areas of art.

Jessie Marion King (1875-1949) was one of the most versatile and productive Scottish artists of all time. She lived and established a career in times when the feminist movement was still fighting for the basic human rights of women and art was one of the rare paid activities considered appropriate for women.

Jessie M. King absorbed countless influences from numerous artistic styles flourishing on the edge of the 20th century to create her special expression which will be presented in the rest of this article together with an overview of her life and work. While not all of her work is considered top art (due to her intense work, almost hyper-productivity, and non-stop experimentation), nobody can't deny her immense influence on her contemporaries and the next generations in many different areas of art. Well, some of these areas were even not considered art before she came on the scene!

So here we are with the top 10 facts about Jessie Marion King.

1. Young Talent

Jessie M. King was born in 1875 and received a strict religious education. Her artistic aspirations were strongly discouraged by her parents. Especially her mother Mary Ann destroyed all of Jessie's drawings when she found them a total waste of time. So Jessie Marion created in secret and hid everything she could. Their housekeeper Mary, on the other hand, encouraged the creativity of the young artist. Later, when Jessie was already married and established her own household, Mary became her housekeeper.

Jessie Marion King, How Cinderella was able to to to the ball

2. She Believed in Fairies

Jessie M. King was a teenager when she fell asleep on a sunny hill and had a strange experience. When she woke up she was certain that she was visited by fairies. She believed in fairy folk for her whole life and all her work is strongly infused with somehow ethereal surreal feel.

Jessie Marion King, Beauty from Beauty and the Beast

3. Educated and Educating

Eventually she convinced her parents that her talent needed formal education. She enrolled in Queen Margaret College and Glasgow School of Art. She became a trained art teacher and a tutor at Glasgow School of Art where she taught book cover design and ceramics decoration. She stayed there for approximately eight years until her marriage to Ernest Archibald Taylor. Contrary (almost controversially) to the customs of the time she decided to keep her maiden name even after the marriage. Her full name became Jessie Marion King, Mr. Ernest Archibald Taylor, but still signed everything just like before. In her marriage, one child (daughter Merle Elspeth) was born.

Jessie Marion King, cover of The Fairy Fruit

4. Influences

Jessie was influenced by all kinds of artistic movements which took specific elements to infuse everything together in her unique style which was even more special because she worked in so many areas of art. If we had to pick just the most important influences, that would be Art Nouveau, Arts & Crafts, and Ballets Russes as artistic movements, or Aubrey Beardsley, Walter Crane, William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and Sandro Botticelli.

Jessie Marion King, The Gospel of Childhood frontispiece

5. Award Winner

Jessie won a gold medal for book design at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin in 1901. The title of the book is L'Evangile de L'Enfance (frontispiece above) and here is an interesting tidbit: her certificate of winning was attributed to Signor (Mister) Jessie Marion King. Today it's hard to imagine, but not so long ago it was unheard of to even think about a woman as a successful artist, not to mention a woman who was able to beat men in a competition of any kind.

By the way, she won numerous awards.

Jessie Marion King, Bookplate

6. Traveler

Among other places, she traveled to Italy, Germany, and France (she lived with her husband in Paris for about three years where he was a professor and they co-founded the Shieling Atelier), she also co-established a summer painting school on the Isle of Arran, and actively worked in artists' communities in Salford and Kirkcudbright.

Jessie Marion King, Photo

7. Glasgow Girl

She was one of the Glasgow Girls, more than a dozen female artists who created in different areas at the end of the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. They were an important part of the Art Nouveau movement with a distinguished British flavor (especially with the Arts and Crafts movement) called the Glasgow style. Glasgow Girls were a mixture of creators, educators, and political activists. Their name came into use when most of the 'Glasgow Girls' were already dead but their influence on painting and design is still visible, especially in ceramics, jewelry, and textiles which were not considered as part of art before.

Jessie Marion King, Illustration from House of Pomegranates

8. Jessie of All Trades

Jessie Marion is today best known for her book illustrations and covers (more than one hundred titles!) but she also designed wallpapers, costumes, jewelry, and embroidered panels, she painted pottery, created murals, was a bookbinder and was a designer of postcards, posters, and bookplates (with inventive usage of different materials, like Japanese vellum or gold dust). She is also considered a pioneer of batik in Europe.

Jessie Marion King, Her Design in Batik

9. Style

If you want a short list of signature characteristics of her style, that would be the excessive usage of dots (pointillism), clear colors, decorative frames, and halos surrounding the heads of many of her characters. Among connoisseurs of art, her early work is considered better than her later creations.

10. Her Art on Display

Her creations are displayed in numerous art galleries and museums. For instance: the National Gallery of Scotland, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Lillie Art Gallery, Milngavie, Glasgow Museums, Edinburgh and the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery in Bedford, Stewartry Museum, Kirkcudbright, etc.

More:
https://manyinterestingfacts.wordpress.com/2023/12/02/learn-batik-with-cinderella/

http://vintagebooks.canalblog.com/archives/2023/11/26/40120895.html

https://jessie-m-king-fairy-world.carrd.co/

Updated: 03/22/2024, Tolovaj
 
Thank you! Would you like to post a comment now?
61

Did You Learn Anything Interesting About Jessie M. King?

Only logged-in users are allowed to comment. Login
Tolovaj on 03/29/2024

I believe it's used for base like you give some kingd og old paper to a child who is avout to start coloring with aquarelles.

Tolovaj on 03/29/2024

Graphics are done by Mrs King, words by John Mason Neale and Thomas Helmore.

Tolovaj on 03/29/2024

I am not sure if any of the mermaid illustrations belong to any book. The left in the top row is a design for tiles.

Tolovaj on 03/29/2024

All nine images belong to those three books.

Tolovaj on 03/29/2024

Yes, I believe they are.

DerdriuMarriner on 03/28/2024

Online sources appear to assemble sparse information about JMK and her daughter, her housekeeper and her family.

For example, it somewhat confounds me that online sources do not have an exact death day for Ernest Archibald Taylor.

Is there any information anywhere or any tradition about JMK's husband's death day in November 1951 or about their daughter's exact birth and death months and days?

DerdriuMarriner on 03/28/2024

The last sentence to the third subheading, Educated and educating, alerts us to JMK and husband Ernest Archibald Taylor bringing up just one child, daughter Merle Elspeth (1909–1985).

Online sources contain perhaps half a dozen photographs at most of perhaps Merle Elspeth King Taylor. They offer no information as to her personal and her professional evolutions.

Might there be more information or might Merle have liked, and obtained, an anonymous life mysterious to all but her cherished few?

DerdriuMarriner on 03/27/2024

Online searches, with perhaps three exceptions, are unproductive regarding Mary McNab.

Art Prints on Demand carries a JMK print with the title None with her save a little maid. Could that be an illustration of JMK and Mary McNab?

The Archives and Collections of the Glasgow School of Art and various Wikipedia articles describe Mary McNab as folklore-proficient and Gaelic-speaking.

The housekeeper, nurse and nursemaid joined the King/Taylor household in 1909 and lived there until her death in 1938. Kirkcudbright was her cremation place even as the Minard church of Agyll, Scotland, was her burial place.

JMK ashes and those of JMK husband Ernest Archibald Taylor (Sep. 5, 1874-Nov. 1951) were scattered atop the McNab grave, in 1949 and 1951 respectively.

DerdriuMarriner on 03/27/2024

Thank you so many times for your links at the very end of the 10th fact, Her art on display.

The LearnbatikwithCinderella article through the manyinterestingfacts link ends with a clearly, succinctly helpful illustrated Requirements for success in batik.

Is it known what personal protective equipment JMK involved in her batik?

DerdriuMarriner on 03/26/2024

Thank you so many times for the manyinterestingfacts link at the very end of your last subheading!

The third-last image in Learn batik with Cinderella includes among the illustrated Requirements for success in batik a Daily News front page.

What is the aforementioned paper's batik-realizing role?


You might also like

Marianne Stokes

Marianne Stokes was among the leading female painters of the Victorian era. H...

Anne Anderson, illustrator and her fairy tale paintings

Anne Anderson was one of the most popular and prolific illustrators of books ...


Disclosure: This page generates income for authors based on affiliate relationships with our partners, including Amazon, Google and others.
Loading ...
Error!