There is a strange attraction to paintings of mountains. Robert Macfarlane has written about how mountains, once feared as dangerous nature, became overlaid with symbolic adversaries: antagonists to be conquered through hardship and resilience, journeys to be undertaken, mettle untested until it meets the crucible of pain and revelation. James Hart Dyke’s paintings cannot help but evoke these thoughts, and yet they also capture the stark beauty of the mountains themselves. Impassive portraits of contrast and colour. Aloof and aloft from the pedestrian pathways our small figures mark upon their faces.
Hart Dyke painted these works on the ground. In July 2025 he trekked over 200 km from Askole towards K2 and back, following the route Vittorio Sella took in 1909, and became the first person to paint K2 en plein air. “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.”
Exhibition Notes: James Hart Dyke: K2 Artistic Expeditions
William Mitchell, of John Mitchell Fine Paintings, is proud to present K2 Artistic Expeditions: James Hart Dyke, an exhibition of recent paintings and drawings made during British artist James Hart Dyke’s gruelling 2025 journey through Pakistan’s Karakoram mountains, to paint the daunting mountain, K2.
Hart Dyke (b.1966), specialises in dramatic mountain landscapes and last year became the first person to paint K2, the world’s second highest mountain (8,611 metres/28,251 ft), 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.
K2 Artistic Expeditions brings 40 of Hart Dyke’s evocative paintings and drawings to the heart of London, transporting the viewer to some of earth’s most awe-inspiring vistas.
In July 2025, Hart Dyke and his friend William Mitchell, who conceived and curated the exhibition (as well as being an experienced mountaineer himself), 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 successive generations of explorers and mountaineers.
Widely considered as one of the world’s most difficult mountaineering challenges, due to its altitude, isolation, and harsh terrain, just reaching the base of K2 is a formidable undertaking. The expedition required meticulous planning by Mitchell, with Hart Dyke dedicating over a year to preparing for their 3-week trek through the stunning but rugged Karakoram range.
In contrast to the famous Everest and Annapurna base camps, undertaken by tens of thousands of people each year, only 1,200 trekkers reach Concordia, known as the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods, before pressing on to the base camps of K2 and Broad Peak (the world’s 12th-highest mountain).
Mitchell explains Hart Dyke’s indomitable focus on documenting their journey: “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.”
Of course, the trek through the huge Karakoram range, which spans the borders of Pakistan, China, and India, to reach K2 was not Hart Dyke’s first experience of mountaineering, having previously undertaken expeditions to paint in the Himalayas, Patagonia and Yosemite. His fascinating and storied career has also seen him serve 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, Hart Dyke climbed the north face of Mont Blanc, accompanied by Mitchell, to paint from the summit at sunset, retracing an ascent made by the 19th-century French painter Gabriel Loppé (1825-1913) and witnessed by Leslie Stephen (1832-1904), father of Virginia Woolf.
Explaining his motivation to go to such extreme places to create his art, Hart Dyke says: “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.”
Recalling their adventure in Pakistan’s Karakoram Mountains, Mitchell notes: “A month later – and 8kg less! -we came back with some wonderful pictures. It was a 150mile odyssey and a remarkable experience.”
Following the London exhibition, Hart Dyke’s Karakoram paintings will travel to the Forte di Bard Museum of the Alps, Valle d’Aosta, Italy (12 December 2026 – 31 October 2027) where they will be displayed alongside 20 of Vittorio Sella’s photographs, in the exhibition K2 Spedizioni Artistiche: James Hart Dyke e Vittorio Sella.
16 – 22 November 2026
John Mitchell Fine Paintings, Marquis House, 67–68 Jermyn St., St James’s, London SW1Y 6NY, United Kingdom
www.johnmitchell.net
Ex-London based reader of art and culture. LSE Masters Graduate. Arts and Culture writer since 1995 for Future Publishing, Conde Nast, Wig Magazine and Oyster. Specialist subjects include; media, philosophy, cultural aesthetics, contemporary art and French wine. When not searching for road-worn copies of eighteenth-century travelogues he can be found loitering in the inspirational uplands of art galleries throughout Europe.
