A childhood drawing of a sailing boat by King Charles, created when he was just ten years old and at Preparatory School, has sold at auction – with the monarch’s artworks ‘rarely’ coming on the open market
A drawing of a sailing boat sketched by King Charles when he was just 10 years old and attending school has sold for nearly £2,000 at an auction.
The now King, a young Prince at the time, drew the charming picture while attending the prestigious Cheam Preparatory School in Berkshire. Coloured with red, yellow and blue, the royal marked the top of the white sale with the number “D 3” and signed the art work “Prince Charles”. The monarch reportedly gifted the drawing to Stella Jack, who was head matron at the private boarding school during his attendance.
It is known that Stella was a strict enforcer of rules but was also known to have a good sense of humour and was affectionately known by the Prince as “dragon”. King Charles was clearly fond of his former matron and sent flowers to her when she celebrated her 90th birthday 50 years later.
When she died in 2010, the Royal head wrote a letter to her family expressing his condolences and recalling the time when she looked after him during a bout of chicken pox. The family had kept the drawing all these years and decided to auction it off after another work of his, a watercolour painting of Lochnagar at Balmoral, was recently sold.
Clevedon Auctions of Bristol sold the drawing for a hammer price of £1,500, rising to £1,896 with fees. Henry Michallet, of Clevedon Auctions, said: “The picture was drawn on a sheet of A4 school paper which still has very faint lines on it. The then Prince Charles used a mix of coloured pencils and a Biro pen for it. We think he drew the picture for Stella Jack.”
They added: “We don’t have any information on the boat in the drawing, it may have been drawn from his imagination or from memory of a recent sailing trip. His passion for art started at a young age and is something that he has kept on doing all his life. He has mainly worked with watercolours because he thinks his security detail would have to hang around for too long waiting for oils to dry.
“An original watercolour by him would sell for tens of thousands of pounds so this is an original piece of art from a reigning monarch for a very affordable price. They rarely come on the open market. Limited edition prints of his watercolours are on sale at the Highgrove gift shop for £3,000. The fact that he is now King adds that extra element to it, rather than if he was still the Prince of Wales.”
Stella Jack, who received that painting from King Charles when he was a boy, attended Cheltenham Ladies School as a child and after World Ward Two, she was made head matron at Cheam School, which the King attended from 1957 until 1962. Stella was reportedly the ‘go to’ for any of the 80 boarding boys at the school, as well as their parents, when they had any worries. She met the other members of the Royal Family many times and retired in 1974 after 26 years in the role.
