This summer, visitors to the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace will see a special exhibition, The King’s Tour Artists, featuring over 70 works of art from His Majesty’s own collection, many on public display for the first time.

In the spring of 1985, the then Prince of Wales invited, at his own expense, John Ward to join a royal visit to Italy as the official tour artist, with the brief to draw or paint whatever inspired him. For the past 40 years, official tour artists have been personally selected by The King to accompany him on royal overseas tours with the brief remaining largely unchanged throughout. Forty-two artists to have undertaken this role, who collectively have visited 95 countries during 69 tours, will be represented in the exhibition.

The works on display in the Palace’s Ballroom, chosen from a selection made by The King, will provide glimpses of life on a royal tour, capturing the tone, colours and atmosphere in ways that differ from a photographic record. 

Publication

An accompanying publication, The Art of Royal Travel: Journeys with The King, will further explore and celebrate this special royal tradition. Featuring recollections from the 42 artists and over 100 illustrations, it tells the behind-the-scenes stories of the tours from an unrivalled perspective. Available from Royal Collection Trust shops from June 2025.

The Tour Artists

Warwick Fuller

When Warwick Fuller joined the royal visit to Australia and Samoa in 2024, the most recent tour to be represented in the exhibition, it was his fourth tour as the official artist. Familiar with the relentless pace of royal tours, while in Canberra Fuller went straight to the Australian National Botanic Gardens, where the events of the day were to conclude. On arrival, he was directed to the location of the waratahs, which had been spotted in full springtime bloom beside a mature eucalyptus. The waratah plant, native to eastern Australia and related to the ancient Protea group of plants, has long held significance in Indigenous Australian culture. Its ability to survive bush fires and regenerate links it to sentiments of strength and resilience.

Phillip Butah

In 2023, Phillip Butah was invited to join The King and Queen on a State Visit to Kenya, hosted by President William Ruto, having first met His Majesty in 1998 when he became the youngest-ever winner of the Prince of Wales’s Young Artists’ Award. As recounted in The Art of Royal Travel: Journeys with The King, the most memorable engagement for Butah was a visit to an elephant sanctuary in Nairobi National Park. Having never painted anything like it before, he wanted to recreate the weather, the noises and the elephants behaving like children, playing with each other.

Susannah Fiennes 

The Royal Yacht, HMY Britannia, features in the work by Susannah Fiennes, produced during a visit by the then Prince of Wales to Hong Kong when representing Queen Elizabeth II for the handover to China in 1997. Fiennes made sketches of life on board, including a watercolour of two Royal Yachtsmen following the daily routine of lowering and raising the flag. The tour would be the last for the Royal Yacht, which was decommissioned later that year.

These works are a selection of the 42 artists that can be seen on display in the Palace's Ballroom and in the accompanying publication, The Art of Royal Travel: Journeys with The King.