The day Queen Elizabeth looked like 'one of the royal corgis who has suffered a stroke'? Not that Her Majesty seemed to mind...
It’s not the most flattering royal portrait, perhaps.
According to the editor of the British Art Journal, it made the late Queen look 'like one of the royal corgis who has suffered a stroke.’
Yet Her Majesty did not seem to mind the heavy-jawed portrayal in a now-notorious painting by Lucian Freud in 2021.
Lucien Freud's portrait of the late Queen now hangs at Buckingham Palace
Queen Elizabeth II shakes hands with artist, Lucian Freud
Author of the best-selling The Palace Papers, Tina Brown
According to author Tina Brown, commissioning Freud was seen as something of a risk given his reputation for painting ‘fleshy, pendulous nudes.’
Writing in her best-selling book The Palace Papers, she explains: ‘Breaking a lifelong rule of insisting his subjects come to his studio, Freud travelled to the Picture Conservation Studio at Friary Court at St James’s Palace where, from May 2000 to December 2001, the Queen sat for 15 sessions.
‘They reportedly had ‘a whale of a time’ and talked about horses and racing non-stop.
‘The resulting portrait was as unforgiving as one might expect from Freud: grim, coarse-featured and imposing.
‘There’s a fixed resolution to the sovereign jaw and a weighty crown plonked on her head.’
One critic suggested the monarch should have Freud locked up for lese majeste.
Yet as Brown explains, the Queen herself displayed her customary lack of personal vanity when the portrait was displayed.
‘”Very interesting,” she remarked gnomically. Perhaps it helped that it was small (six by nine inches).’
This was in marked contrast to the way Winston Churchill had reacted to Graham Sutherland’s portrait of him commissioned to mark his 80th birthday in 1954 and presented to him that same year. It had been paid for through contributions from MPs and members of the House of Lords.
A black and white photograph of Graham Sutherland's Winston Churchill portrait, which was presented to the great man by past and present members of the Houses of Lords and Commons in 1954
Churchill very much disliked Sutherland's portrait, claiming it made him look like a halfwit. His wife Clementine is pictured leaving the 80th birthday celebrations, where it had been presented to him. She would later burned the picture
Churchill, who viewed the painting as unflattering, was thrown into a ‘thunderous mood’, writes Brown. And following its presentation, the work of art was never seen again.
In 1978, his wife Clementine admitted to having burned it.
The Queen had a more gracious reaction to her own portrait, writes Brown:
‘In 2017, recognising its significance in the artist’s oeuvre, she approved the hanging of the portrait in the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace.’
