K2: James Hart Dyke

Marquis House, 67, Jermyn Street, London SW1Y 6NY

Opening hours: Monday: 2pm - 6pm, Tuesday - Sunday: 10am - 6pm

Free admission

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William Mitchell presents K2 Artistic Expeditions: James Hart Dyke at Marquis House in St James's, London, from 16 to 22 November 2026.

The exhibition brings together paintings and drawings made from James Hart Dyke's 2025 journey through Pakistan's Karakoram mountains, conceived and curated by William Mitchell of John Mitchell Fine Paintings.

British painter James Hart Dyke, specialising in mountain landscapes, became the first person to paint K2, the world's second highest mountain, en plein air, and the mythical Karakoram Mountains in Baltistan, Pakistan, capturing the 40-mile-long Baltoro Glacier and many of its peaks in a remarkable series of oil paintings and watercolour sketches.

In July 2025, Hart Dyke and Mitchell trekked over 200 km, from the hamlet of Askole towards K2 and back, following the route taken by the Italian photographer and mountaineer Vittorio Sella (1859-1943) in 1909.

Sella's groundbreaking large-format photographs, taken at K2 and during the long approach, as well as on the nearby peaks of Broad Peak, Mitre Peak, and Gasherbrum IV, have inspired generations of explorers and mountaineers. The panoramas he captured from Concordia, a glacial crossroads in the heart of the Karakoram, were particularly spectacular.

Due to its altitude, isolation, and harsh terrain, reaching the base of K2 is a formidable undertaking. The expedition required meticulous planning by Mitchell, a mountaineer himself and the leading specialist in the French peintre-alpiniste Gabriel Loppé (1825–1913) and painters of the Alps. Hart Dyke dedicated over a year to preparing for the three-week trek through the stunning but rugged Karakoram range.

Compared to the Everest and Annapurna base camps, undertaken by tens of thousands of people each year, only around 1,200 trekkers reach Concordia and beyond, to the K2 and Broad Peak base camps.

“Sketching and painting nearly every day on the long route to K2, in all conditions and at altitude, James created a pictorial record of this extraordinary landscape. In bridging the 116 years between the two journeys, K2 Artistic Expeditions became the natural title for the exhibition.” - William Mitchell

Hart Dyke has undertaken expeditions to paint in the Himalayas, Patagonia and Yosemite, served as an official artist on four Royal Tours, embedded with British forces in war zones and spent a year working with the Secret Intelligence Service for the exhibition A Year with MI6. In 2022, he climbed the north face of Mont Blanc with Mitchell and painted from the summit at sunset, retracing an ascent made by the nineteenth-century painter Gabriel Loppé (1825-1913) witnessed by Leslie Stephen, father of Virginia Woolf.

“I search out those landscapes that connect us more directly to the universe and, in doing so, hope to touch on the mystery and beauty of our own brief existence.”

- James Hart Dyke

Following the London exhibition, Hart Dyke’s Karakoram paintings will travel to Forte di Bard, Museum of the Alps, in Italy’s Valle d’Aosta. From December 2026, they will be displayed alongside twenty photographs by Vittorio Sella under the Italian title K2 Spedizioni Artistiche: James Hart Dyke e Vittorio Sella. The exhibition will remain on view until the end of October 2027.

Add to caldendar     James Hart Dyke Biography