IMAGINE being a portrait artist, someone who critically studies a person's face and body to draw out the truths that lie within. Painting a portrait is about the relationship that develops between artist and sitter and both have to give something of themselves for a portrait to be successful. Then imagine taking up your palette covered in smears of oil paint and a selection of brushes and walking towards your new sitter for the first time. Nervous? Excited? Now imagine that sitter is Queen Elizabeth II, Britain's longest-reigning monarch, head of the Commonwealth and the most portrayed woman in history.
For nearly 70 years, The Queen has regularly sat for a wide range of portrait artists and photographers, each keen to highlight different aspects of her personality, her role, her features. Whether afforded a single sitting, as American photographer Annie Leibovitz was, or a series of sittings over 18 months, like esteemed painter Lucian Freud, each artist wants to get under the skin of their sitter, even when that sitter is royalty.
The Queen has often embraced the challenge of being depicted by contemporary artists. A young Justin Mortimer modernised one official portrait by slicing up her body with yellow paint and Polly Borland added a gold-glitter backdrop to celebrate the Golden Jubilee. Freud always strove to go beyond outward appearances and wanted his paint to conjure a person's presence, not simply their likeness, on the canvas. As far as I am concerned,' he said, 'the paint is the person.' He revelled in naked flesh and often placed subjects under harsh overhead lights. In sitting for him, The Queen agreed to be scrutinised by a man who would bend no knee to tradition or sycophancy. He presented the truth he found in her face, painting her so her head filled the diminutive canvas.
Denne historien er fra May 25, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra May 25, 2022-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
