[4] Her father was James Wat(t)ers King, a minister with the Church of Scotland, and her mother was Mary Anne Anderson.

[6] King had a spiritual experience in Argyll as a teenager when she fell asleep on a hillside and felt the touch of fairies, in whose existence she continued to believe.

As a student, she received a number of awards, including her first silver medal from the National Competition, South Kensington (1898).

Despite the influence of Art Nouveau, she was inspired to create unique designs where she did not literally translate the real world.

In the same year her binding for "L'Evangile de L'Enfance" was awarded a gold medal in the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art, held in Turin.

The accompanying certificate was made out to "Signor Jessie Marion King" because there was no provision for a prize to be won by a "Signora".

[4][6] The couple honeymooned on the Isle of Arran where they would later rent out cottages in High Corrie to run a summer school of painting and sketching.

During this period King encountered the new colours introduced by Léon Bakst in his costume and set designs for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes[13] and her works in Paris are considered influential in the creation of the Art Deco movement.