Artists

Born in Pietermaritzburg at the end of the 19^th century, Edith King was the oldest of the first generation of the Everard Group of women artists. She was well-educated and having studied at London and Oxford University, she went on to become a dedicated teacher and published poet. Her art training included drawing classes at the Bristol Municipal School of Art and later at the Royal Drawing Society of Great Britain, followed by an informal art training in Paris before she returned to South Africa where she was appointed as art mistress at Eunice School for Girls in Bloemfontein in 1905. She subsequently served as principal of the school from 1913-1923 when she retired and moved to her sister Bertha Everard’s family homestead, Bonnefoi, in the then Eastern Transvaal. Edith was the family organiser and the spokesperson for the Everard sisters and was instrumental in arranging exhibitions and overseeing sales.

Edith King was captivated by the South African landscape, and in contrast to her sister Bertha’s paintings, her work is quietly commanding with close-up and carefully observed studies of plants and nature using simplified but confidently stylised lyrical and rhythmic linear marks. King’s paintings are characterised by the strident use of line and colour which describe growth and movement, through her intimate depictions of nature in the foreground and the vastness of the landscape behind. Her preferred medium was watercolour which she used primarily on buff-coloured paper, with great technical facility.

Edith King exhibited in group exhibitions throughout South Africa from 1931, including with The New Group, and on the 1956 and 1960 Quadrennial Exhibitions. Her work is represented in all major public art collections in South Africa.