Stephen Wiltshire MBE, Hon.FSAI, Hon.FSSAA is an artist with an extraordinary gift for drawing and painting intricate cityscapes. His unique ability, despite his disabilities in areas like speech, is what truly distinguishes him. As an autistic, artistic savant, he is one of only 100 diagnosed across the globe, making his talent truly exceptional.
A Channel Five programme featured Stephen drawing a 13-foot panorama of a seven-mile stretch of the London skyline in pen, ink, and pencil. What’s truly remarkable is that he accomplished this after just one brief helicopter trip along the Thames. In a mere five days, Stephen had captured almost every significant building in the city to scale, from the Swiss Re Tower to the high rises of Canary Wharf, with the number of floors and architectural features all recaptured in precise detail. This unique perspective, born from his exceptional talent, is what makes Stephen’s art so intriguing.
He was born in 1974 to a Barbadian father, Colvin, and a St. Lucian mother, Geneva, in Little Venice Maida Vale West London. As a small child, he was completely mute and found it hard to relate to other people. He had no language and lived entirely in his world. At the age of three, he was diagnosed with Autism the same year his father died in a motorbike accident.
Stephen was sent to Queensmill School at age five. It soon became apparent that he communicated through the language of drawing, first animals, then London buses, and finally buildings. His teachers at Queensmill School encouraged him to speak by temporarily removing his art supplies so that he would be forced to ask for them. Stephen responded by making sounds and eventually uttered his first word—”paper.”
At the tender age of nine, Stephen learned to speak fluently. His early illustrations, which depicted animals and cars, were a precursor to his later achievements. His fascination with sketching landmark London buildings began when he was about seven, and this passion was nurtured by one of his teachers. This teacher would accompany his young students on drawing excursions and enter them into drawing competitions, where Stephen’s talent shone. His numerous awards, earned at such a young age, caught the attention of local and national media, sparking interest in this young child’s remarkable abilities.
This was the start of his lifelong career. By age eight, he received his first commission from British Prime Minister Ted Heath to create a drawing of Salisbury Cathedral in February 1987. Stephen appeared in The Foolish Wise Ones. (The show also featured savants with musical and mathematical talents.) During his segment, Hugh Casson, a former president of London’s Royal Academy of Arts, referred to him as “possibly the best child artist in Britain.”Casson introduced Stephen to Margaret Hewson, a literary agent who soon became a trusted mentor. Her stewardship of her client’s monetary interests, ensured a trust was established in Stephen’s name where his fees and royalties were used for his benefit.
On his return, Stephen embarked on a drawing tour of Venice, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, attracting crowds wherever he stopped to draw. He was accompanied part of the time by Sacks, who was conducting research for a new book on Stephen’s story. His third book, Floating Cities (1991), contains the elaborate drawings he made on tour.
Stephen to all genres of music on his mobile while drawing. He has perfect pitch and has been endorsed by The Royal College of Music to perform his piano and singing skills. However, his true passion remains drawing and painting.
He earned his postgraduate degree in drawing and printmaking at the prestigious City & Guilds Art School in 1998. He then completed a two-year course in desktop publishing. He created a retro disco cartoon for his coursework and passed it a year before all the other students.
In 2006, Wiltshire was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for art services. “It’s an absolute honour,” his sister, Annette, told Geoffrey Wansell for the London Daily Mail (January 3, 2006). “It brought tears to my Mum’s eyes because we’ve all worked so hard for Stephen.”
“Stephen is extremely humble and not fazed at all,” says Annette, who manages the gallery. Fame “hasn’t altered his concentration or even made him nervous … I think it pushes his abilities even further.”
He opened a permanent gallery in the Royal Opera Arcade in London the same year. His largest-ever drawing is a panoramic view of Tokyo, measuring ten metres in length. Stephen completed the artwork using pen only, which took eight days.
His drawings are a testament to assured draughtsmanship and an ability to convey complex perspectives easily. But more importantly, they reveal his mysterious creative ability to capture a building’s sensibility, which determines its character and voice.
