Foreword by William Mitchell
John Mitchell Fine Paintings have represented the British landscape painter James Hart Dyke for over twenty-five years and hold exhibitions of his work nearly every year.
James Hart Dyke’s work is centred on landscape painting, from the domesticity of paintings of country houses to mountain landscape paintings generated from physically demanding expeditions over remote terrain. James has also undertaken a series of projects including accompanying the then Prince of Wales as the official artist on royal tours, as ‘artist in residence’ for the British Secret Intelligence Service, as an artist embedded with the British Forces in war zones, working for the producers of the James Bond films and as ‘artist in residence’ for Aston Martin.
These projects required him to respond in many ways and have allowed him to experiment with more graphic forms of painting influenced by his studies as an architect at the Royal College of Art. His portraits have been shown at the National Portrait Gallery and at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibitions.
Aside from his many commissioned projects, James has focussed increasingly over the last decade on mountain and wilderness painting. With painting expeditions to such places as the less frequented valleys in the Himalaya, Patagonia, Morocco and, nearer to home, in the Alps, James now enjoys a worldwide reputation as one of the leading mountain and wilderness painters of his generation.
The search for sublime landscape has led to James becoming an experienced mountaineer in his own right. This has enabled him to trace some of Edward Whymper’s first ascents in the Alps for an exhibition to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Whymper’s conquest of the Matterhorn. Indeed, in July 2022 he accompanied William Mitchell and fellow climbers in a remarkable ascent of the north face of Mont Blanc in order to paint the setting sun from the summit.
The Mont Blanc painting expedition was a re-enactment of a climb made in 1873 by the first true mountain painter and climber, the peintre-alpiniste Gabriel Loppé. Loppé was accompanied by the writer and mountaineer Leslie Stephen, whose subsequent account of the feat remains one of the finest mountaineering tales to date. Working for over an hour-and-a-half, James became the first artist to paint from the summit of Mont Blanc since Loppé’s day.
About the Author
William Mitchell read Modern Languages at Durham University before beginning his career in the art business in Paris, where he spent two years with Eric Turquin’s leading cabinet d’expertise. He has since developed a particular interest in French, Swiss and German Romantic landscape painting and, over the past twenty-five years, has become an acknowledged specialist in paintings of the Alps.
William has sold paintings to institutions including the Louvre, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. and the Clark Art Institute, and is Keeper of Pictures at the Alpine Club. His longstanding fascination with Alpine art has also shaped the gallery’s annual Peaks & Glaciers exhibitions, the 25th of which was held in 2026.
Central to William’s research has been the French painter and mountaineer Gabriel Loppé (1825-1913), whose work he has studied for more than three decades. In 2018 he wrote and published Gabriel Loppé, Peintre-Alpiniste, the first monograph in English devoted to the artist. It was this shared fascination with Loppé, Mont Blanc and the history of painting at altitude that ultimately led to the 2022 expedition with James Hart Dyke.
