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Henry John Yeend King was an important Victorian genre and landscape artist. He was born in London on August 21, 1855 and began his education as a choirboy at the Temple Church. One of the artist's earliest recollections was of being locked in the building one afternoon after practice: "I had to spend the night in a cabin built of pew cushions, while my father was inquiring at every hospital in London. After three weeks' rest with a bad cold, on going back to my choral duties I was summoned to an interview with a Bencher, who, after regaling me with cake and wine, presented me with five shillings for having been a 'good boy,' and 'for not having thrown my boots through one of the stained-glass windows.' The idea of doing such a thing had never occurred to me." He continued his schooling at the Philological School before being apprenticed to O'Connor's, the glass painters, of Bernes St., London for three years. After working at O'Connor's he went to study painting under the Victorian artist William Bromley, RBA, and then he traveled to Paris to study under Leon Bonnat (1833 - 1922) and Fernand Cormon (1854 - 1924). His academic training in Paris, along with a definite influence of the French Realists and Impressionists, helped mold his fully matured style of carefully modeled figures, plein air technique and bold coloration.
Yeend King lived in London for most of his life however, like many of his contemporaries his heart was 'in the country'. He traveled extensively throughout England and France in search of suitable subject matter. In 1885 he wrote and illustrated an article entitled "A Round in France" for The Magazine of Art - giving both a visual and written tour of the French countryside leading to Brittany. His speciality was scenes of rustic genre and the countryside - almost never showing the heavily industrialized cities. His paintings depict pretty farm girls (often using his own daughter as a model) at work in the fields or on the farm - much like the French Realist artist Julien Dupré; or women at rest in tranquil landscapes or cottage gardens.