Limited -edition signed prints of watercolours by King Charles III have fetched thousands of pounds after being snapped up at Wotton Auction Rooms in Gloucestershire.
The works, created from original paintings made by the King at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, were consigned from a local private collection once owned by a South Cotswolds collector.
Joseph Trinder, managing director at Wotton Auction Rooms, said the sale felt particularly meaningful given the auction house’s proximity to Highgrove, the King’s Gloucestershire home.
“Our auction house is, in effect, on his doorstep,” he said. “We’re almost neighbours, and it’s no secret that the Cotswolds – and Gloucestershire more broadly – is an area the King has always held very dear. Locals in Tetbury and the surrounding villages are quite used to seeing him passing through, so to be able to handle these works here feels especially significant.
“I’d like to think he’d be rather tickled by it all.”
Mr Trinder said the prints were instantly recognisable as the work of the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles, describing his style as “confident yet fluid, with a lightness of touch that feels both assured and intimate”.
One print depicts a side view of Balmoral Castle, while the other shows a more recessed perspective of its frontage. Balmoral, Mr Trinder added, holds particular resonance as the spiritual home of the Royal Family and a place where the King feels deeply at ease.
“While these images now exist in the public realm as limited-edition prints, they originate from something far more private – a moment of quiet contemplation,” he said. “One imagines the King seated alone with his paintbrushes and watercolours, observing Balmoral.
“In a life so often spent in the public eye, the act of sitting quietly to paint feels profoundly human. That private stillness, captured through art, is perhaps what makes these works so touching.”
