Born in 1966, James Hart Dyke studied architecture at Manchester University and at the Royal College of Art. He worked as a tutor and painter at the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture Summer Schools and later for the Prince of Wales’s Urban Design Task Force. In the mid-1990s, he studied painting at the City and Guilds of London Art School, and established himself as a painter of landscapes, portraits, and architectural scenes. He had never been to the Middle East before, but having previously travelled with the Prince of Wales on the royal tour to East Asia in 1998, he knew what to expect in terms of practicalities and etiquette, and therefore felt freer to enjoy the trip, and to maximise its potential artistically. By a coincidence, Paintings from Nepal, his first solo exhibition which had grown out of his first trip with the Prince, concluded in London on the day he left for Saudi Arabia . It seemed to him a sign that a new and exciting chapter in his artistic career was beginning.
The thought of travelling to Saudi Arabia had initially conjured up romantic images of deserts, Bedouin tribesmen and their camels, palm trees, and oases. Through background reading, designed to give himself more of a sense of the country, he became aware of a succession of larger-than-life figures from Britain who had visited Arabia from the mid-19 th century, and recorded their impressions. There was the explorer and Orientalist Sir Richard Burton, who wrote Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Mecca (1855); Charles Doughty, whose Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888) is still regarded by many to be one of the finest travel books ever written; Wilfred Scawen Blunt, whose sympathy and understanding of Islam shines through his writing; T E Lawrence, the champion of Arab nationalism, whose Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1926) records with artistic licence his participation in the Arab revolt in Hejaz and Trans-Jordan during the First World War; Bertram Thomas, whose Arabia Felix describes his 58 day 900 mile trek across the Empty Quarter by camel in 1931; Harry St John Philby, who was the first European to cross the Empty Quarter from east to west, became an unofficial adviser to King Abdul Aziz (Ibn Saud), and converted to Islam; and Sir Wilfred Thesiger, whose Arabian Sands (1959), describing two journeys across the Empty Quarter in the late 1940s, remains today in Britain the most popular contemporary travel account of Saudi Arabia. Their exploits and descriptions have fired and refired the imagination of the British during the past 150 years, and helped forge a romanticised view of Arabia among the British, a recent example of which is Davis Lean’s epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Here in technicolor glory is the definitive image of the romantic hero Westerner in the desert, identifying with the freedom of the Arab, and with the emptiness, loneliness, and unique beauty of a landscape which tests human endurance.
James Hart Dyke was unaware of other British artists who had painted in Saudi Arabia, but he knew of the famous lithographs of idealised landscapes and classical ruins by the Scottish painter David Roberts, which resulted from a journey the artist had made in 1839 across the Sinai Peninsula to Petra, Jerusalem, and Palestine, and along the Lebanese coast to Baalbec. He particularly admires the selective and descriptive attention to detail in Roberts’s monumental views, and their finely controlled grandeur. The Prince of Wales has a group of such lithographs hanging at Highgrove. Hart Dyke also knew well the fluid oil sketches of the Bedou, painted by the American John Singer Sargent in Syria and Lebanon in the early 1900s. Sargent is an artist he turns to again and again to study his seemingly effortless compositions, drawing, colour combinations, and painting techniques.
James Hart Dyke arrived in Riyadh with the Prince of Wales on Monday 22 November 1999 from Muscat . The royal tour party was half way through a tour of the Gulf region, having already been to the United Arab Emirates and Oman . Up to this time, Hart Dyke had been able to make only pencil drawings in his sketchbook and he continued to do so for the brief stay in the capital city: ‘One of the most intimidating aspects of accompanying the Prince as an artist’, he recalls, ‘is the prospect of drawing and painting in very public situations. It is such an honour, that the pressure to produce really good work is enormous. This, together with the fast moving nature of a royal tour, makes it difficult to feel relaxed and hence to really concentrate on one’s work. One felt a little embarrassed, for example, to start sketching in the middle of a state banquet hosted by The Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud (as Crown Prince). But one has to ignore the situation and carry on drawing regardless. It is a wonderful training and I now feel confident to draw in any situation. My sketchbook forms a personal diary of my visual memories and I have found that the joy of drawing is that it is much less invasive for people than camera’.
The following day, the artist flew with the Crown Prince’s son HRH Prince Mit’eb bin Abdullah and HRH The Prince of Wales to Abha, the capital of Asir Province . They were then driven to Al-Jarra in the Asir National Park , where they stayed in a specially prepared tented camp which afforded spectacular views. For the first time, Hart Dyke could relax a little and concentrate on the fabulous landscape that lay before him, although, at 10,000 feet, he had to contend with a mild dose of altitude sickness. This was something he had experienced in Bhutan in 1998 and again, much worse, when he returned the following year to paint near Mount Everest Base Camp in Nepal . Altitude sickness makes it difficult for him fully to focus on his painting, as well giving him a tendency to make him paint in darker colours, especially black. Being at such an altitude in Asir meant that the sunlight was very intense, although it was not necessarily hot. Indeed, in the evenings and at night it was very cold, so Prince Mit’eb kindly provided a kidskin coat to keep him warm.
After arrival and a picnic lunch, the Prince of Wales and James Hart Dyke were taken to a dramatic viewpoint along the escarpment, where they settled down to paint as the sun set. Before he left England , his impression of Saudi Arabia was of a landscape of drifting sand dunes with camels passing by. This was instantly dispelled. Here he was high up in tree and bush-covered mountains, on the edge of a deep escarpment. Astonished to find lavender and brightly coloured wild flowers, he also discovered that the area was inhabited by baboons, which he could hear in the distance. He had never experienced a landscape quite like Asir before: ‘It was huge. One had a real sense of the scale of the earth, even to the extent that one could see the shadow of the earth in the atmosphere. During the day the strength of the light bleached all the colours, although in the shadows one could find the most incredibly hot colours. They remained consistent and gave me plenty of time to paint. However, during the early morning and late evening the landscape came alive as the shadows from the mountains raced across the surface of the earth and the extraordinarily pure and poetic ever-changing colours danced in the atmosphere like some kind of performance. It was the most incredible experience and filled me with excitement and awe. I thought if I could capture just a grain of this magnificence I would be happy’.
The artist had come well equipped for his trip. He had a thick 6B lead pencil and some watercolours, and a small refillable leather sketchbook (8 x 13cm), which he designed himself and which takes buff coloured Ingres paper. It is refillable because he has always been terrified of the first page of a bound sketchbook and the responsibility of having to fill it. An added advantage is that his sketchbook allows him to reorder drawings and to store and protect finished sketches. He uses the sketchbook continually to record events and moments and to note possible compositions for paintings. An oil painting kit is the second essential part of his equipment. It comprises a small oil painting box originally made for him by his father for the tour to Nepal and Bhutan in February 1998. It holds and protects painting boards covered in oil primed linen (15 x 30cm), a bottle of turpentine, a bottle of a mix of stand oil and turpentine, a small palette, one thin sable brush, and one thick hog hair brush. The range of colours he uses is usually restricted to titanium white, raw umber (chosen for its translucent quality), burnt sienna, French ultramarine, and cadmium yellow deep, but for this painting trip, he also took cadmium red light, blue, and lemon. Since he also wanted to make some slightly larger oil studies, he took some 30 x 48 cm canvases and a small portable aluminium easel.
Hart Dyke’s first painting, Evening Sunlight Study, Asir National Park (No. 57, right), was produced in three quarters of an hour. Painting on a translucent raw umber ground, he mixed his oil paint liberally with the turpentine and stand oil, so that he could paint fluidly and quickly, and be able to respond to the continually changing light and colour. The view gave him the impression of flying above the landscape and provided him with the great challenge of having to encapsulate something so majestic and poetic on a small strip of canvas. It was important for him to capture the essence of what he saw and felt, so that he would have enough ‘information’ to take back to London with him to enable him to produce a larger version of the painting.
James Hart Dyke rose at 5 o’clock the next morning with Michael Fawcett, the Prince of Wales’s personal consultant, and returned to the spot where he had painted the previous evening to watch the sun rise and paint it. It was a spellbinding sight, which was to inspire many of his later paintings back in the United Kingdom . Choosing again a small piece of canvas, he worked rapidly for half an hour to record the subtle oranges of the rising sun striking the mountains, and the contrasting purples of the shadows in the deep valleys. He was intrigued by the relationship between the horizon and the sky, as it became suffused with colour (No.58, above). In the later version of the view, he sought to respond to the abstract qualities of the landscape, suggesting the sheer scale of the earth, and emphasising its brooding presence in relation to the sun, establishing a balance between the simplicity of the colour and the repetitiveness of the basic forms.
Later in the morning he went for a walk along the escarpment with the two Princes and, following a picnic lunch, which he sketched for a later painting (No.60), settled down to paint yet another magnificent view. This time he estimated that he would have at least a couple of hours to work, so he painted on a slightly larger canvas (No.62, right). The midday sun was unforgiving, but he wore a good hat, sipped from a large bottle of water, and had the benefit of knowing that the light would remain constant. ‘The grandeur of the view lent itself to a painting of a large version back in London which forms the centre piece of my series of paintings in Saudi Arabia (No.71)’, he explains. ‘I remember clearly the subtlety of the bleached colours in the sunlight competing with the deep purples and blues in the shadows. I had never witnessed a scene like it before’. In the picture, the massive craggy forms of the escarpment rear up against the sky. Unlike other large scale scenes he had painted, such as those in the Alps or the Himalayas , the terrain was all very similar. There was not the variety he was used to in painting snow capped mountain tops descending to rocky terrain and then further down into wooded areas. However, it seemed to him that it was the very simplicity of the Asir landscape which made it so powerful. After finishing the painting, he returned to the Al-Jarra camp, where the royal party was entertained during the evening to some traditional Asir music and dancing by a troupe, which had come from the Dhafir bin Hamsan Tradition Village at Khamis Mushayt, east of Abha.
The following morning, James Hart Dyke stayed at the camp to paint his fourth and final plein air subject in Saudi Arabia , which shows a large Bedouin tent set up as part of the Prince of Wales’s quarters in the camp (No.59, left). Both the Prince and he had remarked on its splendour. As a mark of his appreciation of Prince Mit’eb’s hospitality and interest in his work, and of the Prince of Wales’s patronage and friendship, he produced two versions of the painting, giving one to each of the Princes afterwards as a present: ‘The tent was set up near to where the Prince slept’, he explains. ‘The Prince and I had discussed the possibility of painting it earlier. We were both fascinated by it. While I painted it, the Prince sat close by writing his Christmas cards in the dazzling sun, such is his extreme timetable. I felt guilty, as I am sure he would rather have been painting. As I painted it, I had in mind the John Singer Sargent of the Bedou’.
At midday on the third day, the party left the Al-Jarra camp for Abha, where they were received by Prince Khalid Al-Faisal, who later hosted a lunch for them before their departure to London . After a weekend rest, James Hart Dyke returned to his studio in Clerkenwell, London , with his sketchbook of drawings and the four small painted canvases, with the oil still wet. Using these and his memory, over the next four months, he worked on a series of eight small oil paintings leading to three large ones, Early Morning Sun on the Mountains (No.70, left), and View from the Escarpment (No.71, right). In producing the small oils, his aim was to become so familiar with subject, composition, and colour, that when he came to the larger works, he could concentrate on fluid brushwork and the delicate balance between the abstract and figurative elements, so that the end result would be paintings which evoked the simplicity, beauty and grandeur of Asir.