King Charles launches range of biscuits and sweets adorned with his £6,000-per-print watercolour
Keen amateur painter King Charles has launched a range of biscuits and sweets in packets adorned with one of his watercolours that sells for £6,000-per-print.
King Charles has launched a range of biscuits and sweets in packets adorned with one of his watercolours that sells for £6,000-per-print.
The 74-year-old monarch’s boxes and tubs cost £4.99 to £7.99 and are decorated with one of his decades-old paintings of Sandringham House.
Charles’ range was apparently designed before he became known as King Charles III after the Queen died in September aged 96, as the packaging says the Sandringham House art is being used “by kind permission of HRH The Prince of Wales”.
A message on the back of all the products adds: “Sandringham has been the much-loved country retreat and private home of British monarchs since 1862.”
The Daily Mail reported Charles painted Sandringham House watercolour more than 30 years ago, as it appears in a compilation book of his paintings called ‘HRH The Prince of Wales Watercolours’, which was published in 1991.
The book contains quotes from Charles describing the difficulty of painting the house, where the Royal family gather at Christmas.
He says: “Until I tried to paint Sandringham I thought Balmoral was difficult enough… but Sandringham is in a league of its own, as I discovered the moment I started to draw the house.
“It is a veritable minefield of gables, bow windows, parapets, balustrades, towers, cupolas and gigantic chimneys.
“Trying to get the perspective right was an intriguing challenge in itself… I made life more difficult for myself by selecting a pretty impossible angle from which to do the painting, but I thought it would be more interesting than most others.”
Limited edition signed and framed prints of the king’s Sandringham House painting are currently on sale in London galleries for £6,000 each.
The range of treats is being sold in the gift shop at the visitor centre on the 20,000 acre royal estate in north Norfolk, alongside £8.99 copies of the children’s book ‘The Old Man of Lochnagar’, written by Charles in 1980.
His biscuit selection box includes mini chocolate and gingerbread cookies, while boxes of toffees or clotted cream fudge are priced at £4.99.
Tubs of barley sugars, sherbert lemons and mint humbugs are also available for £4.99.
Charles has said he is an “enthusiastic amateur” painter.
He told the 2000 TV documentary ‘Royal Paintbox’ painting “transports me into another dimension which refreshes parts of the soul which other activities can't reach”.
Even though Charles does not sell his originals, it was revealed in 2016 sales of his prints – at a cost of up to £15,000 each – had raised more than £6 million.
He has not profited from the sales of his prints as all the money has gone to his charitable foundation.
