Ronald King - Prologue to the Canterbury Tales

RON KING CHAUCER’S PROLOGUE

GOLDMARK 2010

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CHAUCER’S PROLOGUE

RON KING Ron King was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1932 but later settled in England and studied at the Chelsea School of Art, 1951-55. He won several awards for his art including a Biddulph Scholarship for Painting, a Monsanto Painting Award and a Forrester Painting Award. After spending three years in Canada as an assistant art director he returned to England to teach at Farnham School of Art, 1961-65.

During 1966-67 he worked for the renowned art printers Editions Alecto producing several screenprints followed by his first illustrations for Chaucer’s The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.

Due to a financial crisis Alecto pulled out of the project before the commission was completed but after King had done much of the work and of necessity he felt prompted to set up The Circle Press. For more than forty years they have continued to produce numerous high quality art prints and limited edition books.

In 2002 the Yale Centre for British Art held a retrospective exhibition called Cooking the Books: Ron King and the Circle Press at New Haven. His work is held in many prestigious public collections

including the British Museum, the V & A, the Tate Gallery and the Library of Congress in Washington.

THE PROLOGUE Ron King lighted on The Prologue primarily because it was a poem he greatly admired – it was Chaucer’s most original piece of writing in the Canterbury Tales, most of which is based on older stories - and because its pilgrims were at the same time vivid individuals and representations of their various segments of English society, so lending themselves particularly well to the emblematic forms the artist had in mind. King was determined to produce a modern version rather than one that aped the past.

King conceived Chaucer’s pilgrims as presences and began developing his ideas in collaged form using torn and cut paper. The influences which shaped his initial experiments included African masks and a book on costume and heraldry.

By controlling the way the paper was torn King was able to subtly impose the symbol of the cross as a motif running through the series, sometimes operating as an emblem for the Church, at others modified to represent a sword or other prop.

Thirty years later the colours are extraordinarily fresh.

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Screenprints, 1978, from a small number of proofs aside from the edition of 150, titled and initialled in pencil

The prints are available at £250 each we can also offer 2 for £445 or 4 for £795 Prices include frame, vat and uk delivery

TO ORDER PHONE 01572 821424

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THE PRINTS Screenprints, 1978, from a small number of proofs aside from the edition of 150, titled and initialled in pencil

The prints are available at £250 each we can also offer 2 for £445 or 4 for £795

Prices include frame, vat and uk delivery

1. front cover: Chaucer, 20.7 x 20.7 cm 2. Monk, 28 x 16.5 cm

7. Host, 30 x 20 cm 8. Parson, 27.5 x 20.7 cm 9. Squire, 29 x 18.5 cm

3. Knight, 27.5 x 16.3 cm

10. Pardoner, 20.5 x 20.5 cm

4. Nonne, 26.7 x 20.7 cm

11. Summoner, 21 x 20.5 cm

5. Friar, 25.6 x 20 cm

12. Shipman, 26.2 x 16.5 cm

6. Miller, 29.5 x 18.5 cm

13. Wife of Bath, 27 x 20 cm

TO ORDER PHONE 01572 821424

CHAUCER’S PROLOGUE

RON KING

GOLDMARK GALLERY UPPINGHAM RUTLAND LE15 9SQ 01572 821424 Open Monday to Saturday 9.30 - 5.30, Sunday 2.30 - 5.30 and Bank Holidays www.goldmarkart.com info@goldmarkart.com