King, Cecil (1921–86), painter and collector, was born 22 February 1921 at Rathdrum, Co. Wicklow, son of Henry King, businessman, of Rathdrum, and Susan King (née Crowe). He was educated at the Church of Ireland Ranelagh School, Athlone, and at Mountjoy School, Dublin (1936–9). Subsequently he joined the printing firm of W. & S. McGowan in Dundalk, where he went on to become a director. During the 1940s his interest in amateur drama led him to take classes at the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin, where his fellow students included Milo O'Shea (qv) and Eamonn Andrews (qv). Around this time he was also involved in An Óige (the Irish Youth Hostel Association), in which he served as honorary national secretary and honorary treasurer. This involvement led him to travel extensively from the late 1940s around Europe, where he visited many major art museums and galleries.
He began to acquire works of art, by both European and Irish artists, and by the mid 1950s he had amassed one of the most important collections of modern art in Ireland. Around 1954 he himself began to paint, under the guidance of Barbara Warren and the English artist Neville Johnson. In his early work he focused on urban scenes, often based on the area of Ringsend, Dublin, where he used subdued tones to produce poetic images of a sombre mood. Even here his interest in the formal qualities of painting – such as the flatness of the picture surface and the juxtaposition of areas of colour on it, which would become a defining feature of his art – is evident. In 1964 he left his successful business career behind in order to devote himself entirely to art, a bold move considering the limited audience for modern art that existed in Ireland at the time. In his own words he recalled how ‘Painting was what I wanted to do, I realised I didn't need a car. I could do without an awful lot of things’ (Sunday Independent, 7 Nov. 1982, p. 15).
By now he was working in a fully abstract style. However, he still drew his inspiration from the external world, particularly the milieu of the circus. A painting such as ‘Trapeze’ (1976; Allied Irish Bank collection) shows how he responded to acrobatic performance, not in any literal or figurative sense, but to the tensions and balances inherent within it. The overall effect is to convey to the viewer the essence of anticipation of the performance. Indeed, his works can create an almost physical sense of involvement on the part of the viewer. This is especially true of his ‘Berlin suite’, a series of screen-prints produced as a result of a visit to East Berlin and published by Editions Alecto of London (1970). He was also inspired to produce a number of paintings on this theme of the claustrophobia of the divided city. Ultimately he aspired to create works which, with their economy and restraint, achieved a meticulously balanced harmony. This concern led him, in such works as the ‘Baggot Street series’, to move away from even the most veiled figurative references, evidence for the fact that he constantly strove to further his artistic explorations.
This quiet determination – he often worked seven days a week – contributed in no small part to the international standing he soon achieved, as did his prolific record as an exhibitor. Writing a foreword to an exhibition of his work at Kilkenny in 1975, the critic William Packer found that King's art ‘confounds the expectations we might have of Irish art, for it is far from local in ambition, accomplishment, and seriousness’. He mounted over twenty-five one-man exhibitions and contributed to a large number of group shows in Ireland and abroad. A significant proportion of his output is to be found in galleries in Europe and the USA, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Gallery, London. He is also represented in the major public and corporate collections in Ireland, such as the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ulster Museum, TCD, Crawford Municipal Gallery, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Arts Council, Aer Lingus, Bank of Ireland, Allied Irish Bank, and ESB. In fact King, with his hard-edge abstract style, was one of the very few artists working in Ireland at that time whose work was comparable to that of the major (principally American) international exponents of abstraction. The term ‘hard-edge’, applied to King's style, may however belie the subtlety he could achieve in terms of his handling of colour and texture. This is particularly true of his works in the media of pastel and tapestry, while his last paintings show a tendency towards more expressive brushwork and a more complex approach to colour.
He enjoyed a happy relationship with Oliver Dowling from 1960 to the time of his death, at Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin, on 7 April 1986, having suffered a heart attack just three days before an exhibition of his work was due to open in Dublin at the Oliver Dowling gallery. His legacy was not alone artistic: he also made a significant contribution to the promotion of modern art in Ireland in his capacity (since its inception in the 1960s) as a member of the organising committee for the Rosc exhibition, where his wide knowledge of international art was much respected. A member of Aosdána, he twice served as commissioner for the Department of Foreign Affairs cultural committee. He was also generous in his encouragement of young artists, whose work he regularly added to his own collection.