William Dring (1904-90) earned his reputation as a fine draughtsman and portrait painter whilst studying under Henry Tonks at the Slade School of Art between 1922 and 1925. He worked as a teacher of drawing and painting at the Southampton School of Art until 1940 when he was employed by the War Artist Advisory Committee, first as official war artist to the Admiralty and later to the Air Ministry. He made a large number of portrait drawings of individuals and groups, all remarkable for their informality. Dring travelled extensively to complete his commissions. The drawing is always precise and carefully modelled using pastel, a medium in which he specialised, and which allowed him to capture the likeness and spirit of his subjects quickly and under a variety of circumstances.

William D. (Bill) King (1910-2012) came from a family with a distinguished military background, and joined the navy at a young age. Over the course of the war he was assigned command of three separate submarines: HMS ‘Snapper’, HMS ‘Trusty’, and HMS ‘Telemachus’. Between December 1939 and July 1940 the ‘Snapper’ sank six ships and King was awarded a Distinguished Service Order in May 1940. In September 1940 HMS ‘Snapper’ was patrolling the German-occupied Dutch coast when she ran aground. A blackout had been imposed along the coast and as such the ‘Snapper’ had little awareness of their position in relation to the shore line. Luckily, somebody on shore must have left a light on, which King was able to use as a guide to turn away from the shore using the strength of the waves to turn. After successfully navigating through this ordeal he was rewarded by an invitation for brandy and cigars with Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. A Distinguished Service Cross was soon to follow.

In 1943 he was placed in command of HMS ‘Trusty’, the only British Submarine in the South China Sea during the fall of Singapore to Japan – which has come to be known as the greatest British defeat of the Second World War. ‘Trusty’ had been ordered to join a flotilla at the naval base in Colombo, however when they arrived they found they were alone and that the base was in disarray after an attack. King took matters into his own hands and the crew patrolled for several months with little to relieve the monotony of life on a submarine. After recuperating from Dengue Fever in Lebanon, King was put in command of HMS ‘Telemachus’. In 1944 he was awarded a Bar to the DSO he had earned a few years earlier, when ‘Telemachus’ successfully torpedoed and sunk the Japanese Submarine I-166.

In this sensitive portrait Dring has depicted King gazing pensively out of the picture plane, deep in thought as if his attention has been caught by something the viewer cannot see.