ORIGINALLY A SERIES OF 7 PRINTS ACCOMPLISHED AS A SPECIAL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT FOR THE ARTS & CRAFT STYLE MAG "THE STUDIO"

THE ORGINIAL PRINTS WERE ACCOMPLISHED WITH GOLD AND SILVER INK AND THE IMAGES JUST STOOD RIGHT OUT AND GRABBED YOU. THESE PRINTS, BECAUSE OF THAT STYLE INK, HAVE A SPECIAL FINE GRAPHIC LOOK AND THE COLORS ARE SUPER. VERY FINE DELICATE WORK WITH A MIX OF ART NOUVEAU AND ARTS & CRAFTS STYLE. SHOWING THREE MERMAIDS OVERLOOKING A GROUP OF CHILDREN ON THE BEACH

THE TITLE OF THIS PRINT IN THE SERIES IS "THE SEA VOICES"

PLEASE SEE PHOTO FOR DETAILS AND CONDITION OF THIS NEW POSTER

ARTIST DESCRIPTION:  Jessie Marion King (20 March 1875 – 3 August 1949) was a Scottish illustrator known for her illustrated children's books. She also designed bookplates, jewellery and fabric, and painted pottery. King was one of the artists known as the Glasgow Girls.

King was born at the manse, New Kilpatrick, in Bearsden, Dunbartonshire, near Glasgow. Her father was James Wat(t)ers King, a minister with the Church of Scotland, and her mother was Mary Anne Anderson. She received a strict religious education and was discouraged from becoming an artist. When King was very young, she would hide drawings she made in school for fear that her mother would tear them up.^[4] Mary McNab, the family housekeeper, was a formative influence, and was regarded by King as her second mother. King had a spiritual experience in Argyll as a teenager when she fell asleep on a hillside and felt the touch of fairies, in whose existence she continued to believe.

Jessie M. King began training as an art teacher in 1891 at Queen Margaret College (Glasgow). In 1892 she entered the Glasgow School of Art. As a student, she received a number of awards, including her first silver medal from the National Competition, South Kensington (1898).

King was made Tutor in Book Decoration and Design at Glasgow School of Art in 1899. She continued to teach until her marriage to E. A. Taylor in 1908, and she chose, against the grain, to keep her maiden name.

King was influenced by the Art Nouveau of the period, and her works correspond in mood with those of The Glasgow Four. Despite the influence of Art Nouveau, she was inspired to create unique designs where she did not literally translate the real world. "I would not copy designs," she said, "but insisted on drawing out of my head." During her early period, she created detailed pen and ink illustrations on vellum.

Most of King's earliest works involved illustration, but she also wrote books and was a skilled jewellery designer. Her first published designs, and some people believe her finest, were for the covers of books published by Globus Verlag, Berlin, between 1899 and 1902. The publisher was a subsidiary company of the great Berlin department store, Wertheim's. The publisher, Georg Wertheim, wanted her to design "a range of items in the 'new Scottish Style.'" In the years 1907–1924 she illustrated more than 20 books published by Edinburgh firm T. N. Foulis. In all she illustrated, wrote, decorated or designed the cover of more than 100 books and other publications.

She made a grand tour of Germany and Italy in 1902 and was influenced by the works of Botticelli. In the same year her binding for "L'Evangile de L'Enfance" was awarded a gold medal in the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art, held in Turin. The accompanying certificate was made out to "Signor Jessie Marion King" because there was no provision for a prize to be won by a "Signora". King became a committee member of the Glasgow Society of Artists (1903) and a member of the Glasgow Society of Lady Artists (1905). Her contribution to Art Nouveau peaked during her first exhibitions, Annan's Gallery in Glasgow (1907) and Bruton Street Galleries, London (1905).

In 1908 King and her husband moved to Salford where their only child, a daughter, Merle Elspeth (1909–1985), was born in 1909; Mary McNab joined the household, which enabled King to continue working. The couple honeymooned on the Isle of Arran where they would later rent out cottages in High Corrie to run a summer school of painting and sketching. In 1910 they moved on to Paris where Taylor had gained a professorship at Ernest Percyval Tudor-Hart's Studios. In 1911 King and Taylor opened the Sheiling Atelier School in Paris. During this period King encountered the new colours introduced by Léon Bakst in his costume and set designs for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and her works in Paris are considered influential in the creation of the Art Deco movement. King and Taylor moved to Kirkcudbright in 1915 and continued to work there until her death.

King also decorated ceramics and worked with batik, which she is credited with introducing to Liberty's. In 1924 she published How Cinderella Was Able to Go to the Ball, "A Brochure on Batik written and illustrated by Jessie M. King."

King died at home in Kircudbright on 3 August 1949, following a heart attack. She was cremated at Kirkcudbright and her ashes were scattered at Minard, Argyll, at the church where Mary McNab was buried.

The Glasgow School was a circle of influential artists and designers that began to coalesce in Glasgow, Scotland in the 1870s, and flourished from the 1890s to around 1910. Representative groups included The Four (also known as the Spook School), the Glasgow Girls^[1] and the Glasgow Boys.^[2] Part of the international Art Nouveau movement, they were responsible for creating the distinctive Glasgow Style (see Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style)).

Glasgow experienced an economic boom at the end of the 19th century, resulting in an increase in distinctive contributions to the Art Nouveau movement, particularly in the fields of architecture, interior design and painting.

Among the most prominent definers of the Glasgow School collective were The Four. They were the painter and glass artist Margaret MacDonald, acclaimed architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (MacDonald's husband), MacDonald's sister Frances and Herbert MacNair.^[3] Together, The Four defined the Glasgow Style's fusion of influences including the Celtic Revival, the Arts and Crafts Movement, and Japonisme, which found favour throughout the modern art world of continental Europe. The Four, otherwise known as the Spook School, ultimately made a significant impact on the definition of Art Nouveau. The name, Spook School, or Spooky or Ghoul School, was originally a "derisive epithet" given to their work which "distorted and conventionalized human... form."^[4]

The Glasgow Girls is the name now used for a group of female designers and artists including Margaret and Frances MacDonald, both of whom were members of The Four, Jessie M. King, Annie French, Helen Paxton Brown, Jessie Wylie Newbery, Ann Macbeth, Bessie MacNicol, Norah Neilson Gray, Stansmore Dean, Dorothy Carleton Smyth, Eleanor Allen Moore, De Courcy Lewthwaite Dewar, the silversmith Agnes Banks Harvey and Christian Jane Fergusson. May Wilson and Eliza Bell, among others, continued the tradition of ceramic artistry into the 1940s and 1950s by hand painting various items with floral patterns.

Women were able to flourish in Glasgow during a "period of enlightenment" that took place between 1885 and 1920, where women were actively pursuing art careers and the Glasgow School of Art had a significant period of "international visibility". This is sometimes attributed to the "influential" and "progressive" head of the art school, Fra Newbery, who established an environment in which women could flourish, both as students and as teachers. Women benefited from the new Glasgow Society of Lady Artists (founded 1882) which offered a place for women artists to meet and also had exhibition space. In addition, many art school students and staff were involved in women's suffrage. "Students took turns between classes stitching up banners" for the movement.

The name "Glasgow Girls" emerged much later. In the 1960s there was an attempt to give due attention to the work of the city’s women artists to balance the plentiful discussion of the Glasgow Boys. It is thought that the then head of the Scottish Arts Council William Buchanan was the first to use the name in the catalogue for a 1968 Glasgow Boys exhibition. This "invention" has been called an "ironic reference" to the equivalent men’s grouping. The term Glasgow Girls was emphasised by a major exhibition Glasgow Girls: Women in Art and Design 1880-1920 organised by Jude Burkhauser in 1990.

Art Nouveau is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: Jugendstil in German, Stile Liberty in Italian, Modernisme in Catalan, and also known as the Modern Style in English. It was popular between 1890 and 1910 during the Belle Époque period, and was a reaction against the academic art, eclecticism and historicism of 19th century architecture and decoration. It was often inspired by natural forms such as the sinuous curves of plants and flowers. Other characteristics of Art Nouveau were a sense of dynamism and movement, often given by asymmetry or whiplash lines, and the use of modern materials, particularly iron, glass, ceramics and later concrete, to create unusual forms and larger open spaces.

One major objective of Art Nouveau was to break down the traditional distinction between fine arts (especially painting and sculpture) and applied arts. It was most widely used in interior design, graphic arts, furniture, glass art, textiles, ceramics, jewellery and metal work. The style responded to leading 19-century theoreticians, such as French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) and British art critic John Ruskin (1819–1900). In Britain, it was influenced by William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. German architects and designers sought a spiritually uplifting Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art") that would unify the architecture, furnishings, and art in the interior in a common style, to uplift and inspire the residents.

The first Art Nouveau houses and interior decoration appeared in Brussels in the 1890s, in the architecture and interior design of houses designed by Paul Hankar, Henry van de Velde, and especially Victor Horta, whose Hôtel Tassel was completed in 1893. It moved quickly to Paris, where it was adapted by Hector Guimard, who saw Horta's work in Brussels and applied the style for the entrances of the new Paris Métro. It reached its peak at the 1900 Paris International Exposition, which introduced the Art Nouveau work of artists such as Louis Tiffany. It appeared in graphic arts in the posters of Alphonse Mucha, and the glassware of René Lalique and Émile Gallé.

From Belgium and France, Art Nouveau spread to the rest of Europe, taking on different names and characteristics in each country (see Naming section below). It often appeared not only in capitals, but also in rapidly growing cities that wanted to establish artistic identities (Turin and Palermo in Italy; Glasgow in Scotland; Munich and Darmstadt in Germany), as well as in centres of independence movements (Helsinki in Finland, then part of the Russian Empire; Barcelona in Catalonia, Spain).

By 1914, and with the beginning of the First World War, Art Nouveau was largely exhausted. In the 1920s, it was replaced as the dominant architectural and decorative art style by Art Deco and then Modernism. The Art Nouveau style began to receive more positive attention from critics in the late 1960s, with a major exhibition of the work of Hector Guimard at the Museum of Modern Art in 1970.