plexion. She was in her seventies, but
her face was as smooth as a piece of
Meissen porcelain. Her eyes — butterfly
blue at the centre, snow white at the
edges — still looked new, as if they had
just come out of a Harrods box.
So the most portrayed individual in
history has had an impressive photo-
graphic reign. What, though, of the
other artistic territories? What about
her portrayal in the most significant of
all artistic substances — paint? That,
unfortunately, is another story.
The English monarchy has a decent
record when it comes to commission-
ing paintings of itself. Henry VIII
showed true perspicacity when he
made Hans Holbein his court artist. It
was Holbein who invented the extra-
wide monarch without whom the
Tudor industry of today would have
had no monster to imagine. Elizabeth I
may never have found a Holbein, but
she did control a Tudor image machine
that pumped out highly effective pres-
entations of her as the Virgin Queen.
Even as bad a king as George IV showed
superior artistic taste when he got in
Sir Thomas Lawrence to paint him.
The second Elizabeth has, alas, pre-
sided over a downturn in this story.
Most of the painters she has turned to
have come from that bleak institution:
the Establishment School of Untalented
Lackeys. The results have been bad
likenesses or very uninteresting ones.The fashionable Italian Pietro Annigoni
had perhaps the best go in 1955 when
he painted the recently crowned mon-
arch in a traditional manner — the post,
post, post-Renaissance style. The
results were close enough to one of
Beaton’s royal photographs to remain
charming. Just.
Deeper into her reign Annigoni
would fail dismally in an attempt to add
a note of maturity to the image of the
Queen with his 1969 portrait of her as
some sort of human rocket waiting to
be launched from Cape Canaveral. In
an effort to make her look maturely
caped, he makes her look silly.
At some point in this catalogue of
failure someone at the Palace seems to
have persuaded the Queen to be more
adventurous because who should pop
up in 2000 to have a go but Lucian
Freud, the Mr Dissolution of British
painting? Freud was a brave choice. But
also a disastrous one. His tiny portrait,
not much bigger than one of Her Majes-
ty’s postage stamps, makes her look like
an old lady from a care home who has
sneaked into Woolies and nicked a plas-
tic crown. (The Sunday Times was not
granted permission from the Royal Col-
lection Trust to reproduce the picture.)
The one British artist who might
have risen to the task of producing a
portrait of the Queen that added some-
thing meaningful to the royal picture
parade — David Hockney — has refusedthe challenge. Asked about it at the last
jubilee, in 2012, he said he didn’t have
the time and, besides, “I generally only
paint people I know”. Thus Elizabeth
II’s platinum reign has produced nopainted portrait that can be pointed to
as a great royal image. The photography
of her early years is packed with
achievement. The paintings that follow
are relentlessly disappointing.
What happened, I think, is that the
confidence and charisma of the prin-
cess years were brushed aside by a Pal-
ace strategy that demanded a more
humble, less privileged royal portrai-
ture. In an effort to ingratiate them-
selves with the Joneses, the Windsors
began to downplay their aristocracy.
Thus the royal image shifted from
one that might decorate the title page
of Debrett’s to one that could go on the
front of a Saturday section. Indeed, one
of the few genuinely endearing like-
nesses of Elizabeth II from her later
years is Peter Blake’s Diamond Jubilee
one, commissioned especially for the
cover of the Radio Times.
In it, she wears the same sparkling
diadem that she wears on our stamps.
Around her neck hangs a cluster of
serious white bling, which goes with
her white dress and her snowy white
hair. The blue of her garter sash seems
to rhyme with her eyes. The ones
I remember.
What makes the portrait, though, is
the beautiful smile that lights up her
face. It has obviously been sourced
from a photograph. But the artist has
enlarged it into something touching.
That’s what paint can do. cMOST FAMOUS FACE
David Hockney is the
only British artist who
might have risen to the
task, but he has refused
ANNIGONI/CAMERA PRESS CHRISTIE’S IMAGES 2022 THE COMMONWEALTH SECRETARIAT29 May 2022 5