4 - 18 September 2025
The Timlin Collection of paintings, watercolours, works on paper, and editioned prints by William Mitcheson Timlin was assembled by the artist’s brother, Clifford Timlin, also the architect of the William Humphreys Art Gallery in Kimberley, Northern Cape. Comprising 62 outstanding original works, the collection captures the remarkable breadth of Timlin’s imaginative output.
The collection later passed to Clifford’s daughter-in-law and grandchildren, before being offered to the market in 1987, when De Beers Consolidated Mines Limited acquired it and placed it on long-term loan to the William Humphreys Art Gallery (WHAG). For nearly four decades, the Timlin Collection, together with WHAG’s own holdings, represented the largest public collection of the artist’s work in South Africa.
Now, Aspire Art is delighted to present Enchanted Worlds: The Timlin Collection in its original entirety. Having remained under WHAG’s custodianship for almost forty years, the release of this collection by De Beers opens a rare opportunity for collectors worldwide to encounter and acquire these extraordinary artworks.
A British-born architect, illustrator and artist, William Mitcheson Timlin (1892–1943) made Kimberley his permanent home in 1912, at the age of twenty. He quickly became a central figure in the city’s cultural life – as a Founder Member of the Art Section of the Kimberley Athenaeum, a pioneering organisation that laid the groundwork for a permanent art gallery, and as a respected member of Kimberley’s architectural fraternity. Beyond these roles, he firmly established himself as a uniquely imaginative artist.
Timlin is best known for The Ship that Sailed to Mars (1923), the extraordinary fantasy book he both wrote and illustrated, and which today is considered a classic of early 20th-century fantastical illustration.
Alongside his architectural career, he produced enchanting paintings, watercolours, drawings and etchings that reveal his fascination with dreamlike realms. Often populated with ethereal figures, fantastical cities and otherworldly landscapes, his works reveal a mastery of delicate line and luminous colour, blended in a distinctive creative vision of architectural precision and whimsical fantasy.
