Studio open 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week!
Viewing by appointment only
Site updated:-
England 01623 799 309
or 07974 371 255
We will endeavour to better any quote and give you the finest possible service
99.9% of signed, limited editions shown below are in stock, although we usually have only one print of each title
For prices and information please call us 01623 799 309 or email [email protected]
CLICK ON IMAGE FOR DETAILS & TO ENLARGE
Signed, limited edition prints :- Elephants![]()
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Cool Waters "Tiger in the sun" "Just Cats" 'Tiger Fire' 'Sleepy Tigers' Signed, print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition Signed, limited edition Signed, limited edition print
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Jungle Gentleman 'Into the sunlight 'Burning Bright' "The Tigers of Bandhavgarh" Cheetah Family, Serengeti Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
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Indian Siesta Tiger in the snow "The White Tiger of Rewa" Lonely Vigil Snow Leopard Signed, print Signed, print Silkscreen published 2001 David Shepherd Signed, limited edition print
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Cheetah 'In the cool of evening' 'Leopards' "Africa" Silkscreen Published 1992 Silkscreen Published 2002 Silkscreen Published 1997 Silkscreen Published 1993 Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print
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First light at Savuti Savuti Sands The Sentinel "Serengeti friends" Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
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Two gentlemen of Savuti Evening in the Luangwa Jaguar 'Jaguars' Signed print signed, limited edition signed print signed limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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"Cheetahs" Cheetahs of Namibia Clouded leopard and cubs Best spots on the hill Signed print signed, limited edition signed print signed limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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Snow leopard cub cameo Ocelot cub cameo Tiger cub cameo 'Working sketch for the Signed, limited edition signed, limited edition Signed, print painting of a tiger'
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Cool Waters Teenage Tiger Cool Tiger Bengal Tiger cameo Signed print signed, limited edition signed print signed limited edition print
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Lion cubs Tigercubs Tiger sketch Lion sketch Signed print signed, limited edition signed print signed limited edition print
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Lion head Tiger head Lion cameo Young Africa by David Shepherd Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
Signed, limited edition prints :- Wildlife of the world![]()
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Happy Time In the Masai Mara Gentle Giant Old George under Signed, print Giclee edition of 295 Signed, print his favourite Baobab tree
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Old Charlie The Elephant and the Anthill Evening of the elephant Dusty Evening by David Shepherd by David Shepherd by David Shepherd signed, limited edition print print print Silkscreen
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My Savuti Friend Elephants and Egrets Luangwa Evening Silkscreen 2003 Signed, print Signed, print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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'Tembo Mzee' 'The Crossing' Evening in Africa Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
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'Amboseli'silkscreen 'Three Happy Jumbos' Elephant Heaven Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
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African Babies Baobab and friends Land of the Baobab tree Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
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African Waterhole Mothers Meeting African Landscape Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
Signed, limited edition prints :- British wildlife and landscapes![]()
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Panda sketch Cheetah, pencil drawing Elephants, pencil drawing Tigers, pencil drawing Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print Signed limited edition print
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'Winter in Wolong' Pandas of Wolong Up a Gum Tree "Koala" Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print Signed limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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The Water-hole Trilogy High and Mighty Masai Giraffe and young Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
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Zebra, mother and foal, Etosha 'Zebras and Colony weavers' After the rain Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
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Egrets and Friends American Bison The Warthog Family Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print
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African Afternoon "In the thick stuff" Arabian Oryx Greater Kudu Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print Signed limited edition print
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Polar Bear Country Lonely Vigil Lone Wanderers of the Arctic Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print by David Shepherd by David Shepherd by David Shepherd
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Arctic Foxes Mountain Lion silkscreen Ice Wilderness Signed, print Signed, print Signed limited edition print
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Men of the Woods, Orang-Utans Lowland Gorillas (silkscreen) Mountain gorillas of Rwanda In the mists of Rwanda Image size 17" x 27" Image size 14" x 21" Image size 27" x 18" Silkscreen published 2004
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Hot Potami Sunday Best Happy Hippo Baby Gorilla Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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Rhino Reverie Indian Rhino Rhino Beware Black Rhino cameo Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
Signed, limited edition prints :- Aviation![]()
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Whisky the farmyard cat Country cousins Highland Cattle Fred after his Shampoo signed limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd Signed, limited edition print
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Muscovy Ducks Life goes on Sept.'40 Roosters Eggs sixpence a dozen Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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While the sun shines The Lunchbreak This England Mrs P and the kids Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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Old Ben's cottage 'Last leaves of Autumn' The last load of summer The Orphans David Shepherd Published 1987 Signed,limited edition of 850 Signed, limited edition
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Grannie's Kitchen Grandpa's Workshop The Clockmender's Cat Playtime Signed print signed, limited edition signed print signed limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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Is it a Ladybird? 'But teddy doesn't need a ticket' Biscuits 'Cottage companions' Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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Happy home for Donkeys Donkeys Donkeytalk Winter Foxes by David Shepherd by David Shepherd by David Shepherd by David Shepherd Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print
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Plough Team Summertime Captain and Sergeant "Porkers" Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print
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Shampoo Time 'The Old Forge' Jimmy's Forge "The old forge" David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition Bronze
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'Shelties' High Noon 'Shoeing Time' Lazy hazy days Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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'Baby Hedgehog' 'Harvest Mouse' The Water Vole "When I grow up... Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print
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'Baby Tawny Owl' 'Nuts' "Ziggy" "Haggis of Battersea" Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print
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Highland Cattle Prince of Rannoch Moor Highland Mist "Muffin" Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
Signed, limited edition prints :- Steam Trains![]()
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Winter of '43 'Life goes on, Sept1940' "At readiness-Summer of '40" Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print
Signed, limited edition prints :- Military![]()
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Scotsman '34 Heavy Freight '67 "Over the Forth" by David Shepherd by David Shepherd by David Shepherd Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print Signed, limited edition print
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Black Five Country Giants at rest signed print signed, limited edition print
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Zambezi sawmills railway On the sub nigel mine Guildford steam sheds Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition prints David Shepherd David Shepherd David Shepherd
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'Alamein' 'The Ark turning into wind' 'Glory Days' Check point at Fork Hill Signed, print Signed, print Signed, print signed, limited edition print
EMAIL:- [email protected]
Telephone ++44 (0)1623 799 309
or 07974 371 255
DAVID SHEPHERD, CBE, FRSA, FRGS, OBE
David Shepherd is known internationally as one of the world's leading wildlife artists.
He is also a passionate conservationist and he freely admits that he owes all his success to the animals he paints.
Prolific in output as a painter with a brimful of stories and anecdotes, David says he is an extrovert who enjoys talking.
He enjoys being known as a natural promoter and an ardent ambassador for conservation - it's the way he is.
David Shepherd explains that he became an artist in his tender years because he couldn't do anything else.
"My life was a total disaster until I was 20 years old. My one and only ambition was to be a gamewarden, so when I'd finished my education,
I went rushing out to Kenya with the incredibly arrogant idea that I was God's gift to the National Parks. It was a disaster. I knocked on the door of the
Head Gamewarden in Nairobi and said, 'I'm here, can I be a gamewarden?' I was told I wasn't wanted.
My life was in ruins; that was the end of my career in three seconds flat."
"Up to that point, my only interest in art had been as an escape from the rugger field. The game was compulsory at school and I was terrified of it.
I couldn't see any fun in being buried under heaps of bodies in the mud and having my face kicked in. I fled into the art department where it was more
comfortable and painted the most unspeakably awful painting of birds."
Deflated and homesick, David took a job as a receptionist in a hotel on the Kenya coast; the salary was one pound a week.
"So there I was at Malindi on the Kenya Coast in this hotel. I painted some more bird paintings on plasterboard, and I sold seven of them for £10 each to the
culture-starved inhabitants of the town and paid my passage home to England on a Union Castle steamer."
Arriving home, penniless, he had two choices, David decided. He could either become an artist or a bus driver.
Since he suspected that most artists starved in garrets, life as a bus driver seemed the safer bet.
"But my dad was marvellous. He said that if I really wanted to be an artist, I'd better get some training.
The only school we knew anything about was The Slade School of Fine Art in London, so I sent them my first bird painting."
The Slade, too, turned down David Shepherd. He had no talent, they said, and he wasn't worth teaching.
The bus driver position was looking more likely all the time, except for a chance meeting that changed his life.
At a London cocktail party, David Shepherd was introduced to Robin Goodwin.
Robin was a professional painter who specialised in portraits and marine subjects. (David considers him to have been one
of the finest marine painters of this century). He didn't and wouldn't take students, Robin told him, but he agreed to have a look at David's work.
"The next day, I trotted up to his studio in Chelsea and a miracle happened. I showed him that very first bird picture, which I still have and,
for reasons that I have never been able to understand, he decided to take me on. I owe all my success to that man.
He is responsible for my being where I am today."
David believes that the only reason why Robin Goodwin took him on was the challenge.
He studied with him for three years, and he proved a demanding taskmaster.
"The very first half-hour I had with him ended in tears. 'First of all', he told me, 'if you think that because you're creative
you're different from anyone else, and that you can mop your forehead and wear pink trousers and go all Bohemian
and only work when you feel like it, you can shove off.
In November when it's so dark that you can't even see your canvas, you're going to be painting for the tax man, the food bills, and the school fees'."
Robin said, "Throwing paint at the wall and 'expressing yourself' doesn't pay the bills. Artists, like everyone else,
have to work eight hours and more a day, seven days a week, to meet their responsibilities."
"Robin never said anything complimentary about my work and he knew just how far to push me. Once I stormed out of his studio, determined never to return,
but he leaned out of the window and called down to me in the street: 'Don't be such a coward - I'm still teaching you, so you can't be that bad'."
In the years following his training with Robin Goodwin, David began painting aviation pictures. The subject was a natural for him, rooted in his boyhood.
He was eight years old when World War II began in 1939 and had lived in London during the Blitz.
" I used to watch the air raids and the 'Battle of Britain' on the way to school. It was so exciting - we didn't realise people were killing each other."
To paint aviation, David obtained a permit, which gave him access to Heathrow Airport.
"In those days it was a friendly place, not the concrete jungle it is now. I could go almost anywhere I wanted, and Comets, Stratocruisers,
Constellations and lovely old planes like that became my subjects."
"Then, in 1960, the Royal Air Force flew me to Kenya as their guest. When I arrived they said to me, 'we don't want paintings of aircraft,
Art and conservation
In 1962, David painted an elephant picture called 'Wise Old Elephant', which was produced as an unlimited print by Solomon & Whitehead in England
In 1988, from funds raised through the sale of an adjoining cottage to the house, David purchased an old 16th century Surrey barn to use as his studio,
"I hate painting in silence, so my companions are either Gustav Mahler, Glenn Miller, The Beatles or Count Basie."
For the same reasons that David Shepherd likes elephants, he has a passion for steam locomotives.
In 1967, following the sell-out of an exhibition of his paintings in New York, David 'started collecting rather large toys'.
"This was the time when Britain was throwing away her great and proud steam railway heritage at an indecent speed in a premature rush
He was appalled at the way almost-new steam engines were being scrapped, and he wanted to save at least part of a bygone age. His first two engines proved
In 1969 Collins published a collection of David Shepherd wildlife paintings in colour, 'An Artist in Africa', which has run into eight editions
In October, 1995 'David Shepherd, My Painting Life' and David Shepherd 'Only One World' were published and in 2004 his latest book,
TV Documentaries
Other documentaries for television have also been made, including 'Last Train to Mulobezi'; this film tells
In 1988 David made the series 'In Search of Wildlife' with Thames TV; a series of six half-hour films, featuring endangered mammals throughout the world.
Awards
Wise old elephant
by David Shepherd
pitfalls of making a painting look like a photograph.
Gradually, his paintings began to be noticed. One way to get commissions, he reasoned, was to give paintings to the airlines until
they felt obliged to repay him with commissions. The ploy worked; the Chairman of the British Overseas Airways Corporation even
held an exhibition of David Shepherd's paintings.
Through the airlines, David also met his wife, Avril, who was working as a secretary for Capital Airlines of Washington in England.
we fly them all day long. Do you do local things like elephants?' And that's how it all started. I hadn't even painted a rabbit before then."
David Shepherd charged the Royal Air Force £25, including the frame, for his very first wildlife painting of a rhino, and the rest is history.
His paintings of elephants and wildlife have brought him international fame."My career took off, and I've never looked back."
Tiger Fire
by David Shepherd
He found a waterhole poisoned by poachers, around which were lying 255 dead zebra. He realised then that, through his paintings,
which were already in great demand, he could repay his debt to the wildlife that was immediately bringing him such success.
Since that day in 1960, he has raised through his own efforts, and latterly together with supporters of the David Shepherd Wildlife
Foundation, which he set up in 1984, over £3million which has been given away in grants to help save critically endangered mammals
in their wild habitat and to benefit the local people that share their environment.
and which fast became a best-seller. That same year, David's first one-man exhibition at London's Tryon Gallery was a sell-out. He and Avril
celebrated by buying the 16th century Elizabethan farmhouse in Surrey, where they raised their four daughters.
which was laboriously taken apart, each piece numbered and the re-erected on the old tennis lawn just below the house.
The only way to get to it was to dig an underground tunnel which is an enormous attraction to all his friends and visitors.
Unless he's travelling, David now paints "every hour that God gives me," either for conservation or to earn his living.
These days a David Shepherd Exhibition, whether in England, Africa or the United States, can sell out quickly. He has a permanent backlog of
commissioned work and his signed Limited Edition prints can change hands for many times their original price.
"I'm the luckiest man alive."
'Somewhere in England - Winter of '43'
by David Shepherd
Numerous other causes have also benefited from his generosity. In 1977, to "repay my debt" to the Royal Air Force, he painted a picture of a Lancaster
bomber at dispersal, titling it 'Winter of '43, Somewhere in England'. He donated 850 prints, all signed and numbered, of this painting to the
Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund, and the prints raised £96,000 for them.
"I get very excited about anything big. That's why I love steam locomotives as well. They're just like elephants."
to dieselise her railway system. I rang up British Rail and bought two locomotives. The big one, "Black Prince" weighs 140 tons - the baby one,
"The Green Knight" weighs 137 tons."
only the beginning. David founded The East Somerset Railway at Cranmore in Somerset, a registered charity and fully operational steam railway.
In 1975, when the late HRH Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands did the honours at the opening of The East Somerset Railway, the proceeds raised
supported wildlife conservation, in particular David's beloved elephants.
'Giants at rest'
by David Shepherd
Now fully restored, he wants to bring it back to Britain, where it has a future home at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol.
Someone once said that the best thing that ever happened to African wildlife was when David Shepherd failed to become a gamewarden.
David sees it in this way:
"The greatest thrill of my life is to be able to repay in fair measure the debt I owe to the animals I paint and which have brought me such success.
We all have a debt to pay for our stay here. This is mine."
and has a foreword by HRH Duke of Edinburgh.
'The Man who loves giants.'
by David Shepherd
He revised and updated it in 1989. 'A Brush with Steam' was published in 1984 and in October 1985, 'David Shepherd,
The Man and His Paintings' was published, which, for the first time, brought together
in a single volume a fully representative selection of his work. In 1992, 'David Shepherd, An Artist in Conservation' was published,
which is a stunning collection of the best of David's wildlife art with over 90 colour plates.
'Painting with David Shepherd, His Unique Studio Secrets Revealed' was published.
'TheLunchbreak.'
by David Shepherd
by his friend, the late James Stewart, and which has been shown all over the world.
the epic story of the rescue from the Zambezi Sawmills Railway
in Zambia of an ancient locomotive and railway coach and their 12,000 mile journey back to Britain.
These were presented to David as a gift by His Excellency, Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the then President of Zambia,
after David had raised funds with other artists, (through an auction of seven of his paintings in the USA).
This enabled him to buy a helicopter, which he presented to the Government of Zambia for anti-poaching work.
These have subsequently been shown in the United States of America on the Public Broadcasting Channel. Also in 1990 he made the first programme
in the annual series of 'Naturewatch' with Julian Pettifer; and has been the 'target' for 'This is Your Life'.
"I want to live to be 150. It will take that long to do everything I want to do. Unlike some people who perhaps lead a humdrum existence,
I run almost everywhere I go because I am so anxious to get on with the joy of what I am doing next."
David Shepherd celebrated his 70th birthday on 25th April 2001 with a fundraising dinner at the Natural History Museum
which raised over £100,000 for DSWF's wildlife projects.
David Shepherd now lives with his wife Avril in West Sussex and his four daughters all share his passion for conservation and are involved in the work of DSWF.
© David Shepherd artist