When it has been a year since the coronation of Charles III, a media-rich and massive event that took place on May 6 at Westminster Abbey in London, the British monarch is still living First times. Now the king himself has revealed what is the first official portrait of him after being crowned.
Signed by the portraitist Jonathan Yeo, the painting shows, in dominant red tones, the British monarch dressed in the uniform of the Welsh Guards, with which he was appointed colonel in 1975, according to an official statement and the artist’s website. Charles III appears in the center of the painting, two and a half meters high and without a distinguishable background, in which he is only accompanied by a monarch butterfly, which, according to the artist himself, symbolizes both his support for environmental causes and your personal transformation.
The work was unveiled this Tuesday, May 14, but Yeo received the commission in 2020, when Charles of England was still the Prince of Wales – the person who has held that title the longest -, on the occasion of his 50th anniversary as a member of the British textile guild The Draper’s Company. As they announced in their presentation, Carlos III did not sit in front of the artist for the first time until June 2021 in Highgrove; and the last meeting was at Clarence House, the official residence of the monarchs in London. In total, Charles of England has sat opposite Yeo on four occasions, for an hour each time. The first two meetings, as the artist revealed to the BBC, he used mainly to take photos and sketches. It was in the last two when he started painting. Yeo has not revealed much about what they talked about during the sessions, although he has said that the current king has “a great sense of humor” and is a “very attractive person.”
For the artist, the possibility of portraying the monarch is a “privilege.” “Much like the butterfly I painted flying over his shoulder, this portrait has evolved as the role of the sitter in our public life has changed,” he said. “My goal was also to reference the traditions of royal portraiture, but in a way that reflects a 21st century monarchy and, above all, communicate the deep humanity of the subject.” In fact, the butterfly was the king’s own idea. “Early on we had a conversation about how nice it would be to have a narrative element that referenced his passion for nature and the environment, and you said, ‘Why not have a butterfly on my shoulder?’ They often do that.’ I thought: ‘Oh, that’s a good idea, I wish I had thought of that,’ the artist revealed during the presentation of the portrait, according to the newspaper. The Times.
The monarch himself was in charge of removing the black canvas that covered his portrait, displayed for presentation in one of the rooms of Buckingham Palace. A new act that adds to his increasingly active public agenda that he resumed just two weeks ago, after almost three months of absence since he announced that he was undergoing treatment for the cancer he suffers from. An illness and a treatment of which hardly any details have been given, beyond the fact that the king himself said yesterday in an event with his son William, the current Prince of Wales, that he has lost his sense of taste.
After seeing the portrait, Queen Camilla said to the artist: “Yes, you got him,” according to the BBC. “If this were seen as a betrayal, I could literally pay for it with my head, which would be an appropriate way for a portrait painter to die: having his head taken off!” joked Yeo, who also revealed that a previous viewing Carlos III was surprised by the color.
“I do my best to capture the life experiences and humanity etched into each sitter’s face, and I hope that is what I have achieved in this portrait. Trying to capture that for the majesty of the king, who occupies such a unique role, was a tremendous professional challenge and one that I thoroughly enjoyed and for which I am immensely grateful,” the artist said in statements shared on the official Instagram profile of the British royal family, and also on your own account. A message that is accompanied by a carousel of photos that also show the other two members of British royalty that Yeo has portrayed in the past: Camilla, in 2014 when she was Duchess of Cornwall, and Philip of Edinburgh (father of Charles III), in 2008. Among his mentions are also the former British prime ministers Tony Blair and David Cameron, the actress Nicole Kidman, the model Cara Delevingne and the Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai.
The painting will remain on display from this Thursday until June 14 at the Philip Mold art gallery in London, before being definitively moved to the Drapers’ Hall building in the capital’s financial district, on whose walls hang portraits of other British monarchs.
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