The first-born son of a large family, Roy Petley was born on 3 April 1950 in Grantham, Lincolnshire. When he was five, Petley was abandoned to the Woodlands School near Uckfield, Sussex. The school also doubled as a home for abandoned children. He escaped his rough and often violent surroundings through art, teaching himself how to paint and draw.
At the age of sixteen, he received a scholarship to study art at Brighton University. But the pull of Italy and the country’s old masters of art such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo proved too much. After a semester at Brighton University, he hitchhiked to Italy, settling in Florence where he eked out a living by drawing tourists who frequent the numerous cafes of the city, and studied the classics at the Uffizi Gallery and Palazzo Pitti. It was also in Florence that Petley had the chance to work with the collections of old master prints and drawings of the Gabinetto dei Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi Gallery.
Petley paints en plein air and his works have been likened to those of John Constable, Edward Seago, and Campbell Mellon.
Following a chance encounter with the Duchess of Kent, a member of the late Queen Mother’s household staff came to look at his works. Soon after William Tallon, the late Queen Mother’s steward, returned to her with Petley’s portrait study of Prince Charles, Petley was summoned to the Palace. Thus began the artist’s long-standing friendship with the British Royals, which includes the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duchess of Norfolk as his supporters. Exhibitions ensued in London and Dublin, and in places as far away as Dallas, Texas and the island of Barbados. In addition to Royal collectors of his work paintings by Petley can be found in the collections of Frederick Forsyth, Susan George, Timothy Dalton and The Sultan of Brunei.
