The first portrait of King Charles since his coronation, a 2.6-metre-by-two-metre work by British artist Jonathan Yeo, was unveiled this week in London. The monarch got his first look at the artwork on Tuesday at Buckingham Palace, with Charles and Queen Camilla present.
The portrait, which features Charles against a background of red hues, wearing the red uniform of the Welsh Guards military unit, has sparked a range of reactions on social media. A butterfly is depicted just above his right shoulder, adding a unique touch to the composition.
Rebecca English, the royal editor for the Daily Mail in London, shared her thoughts on X, stating, “Cards on the table, I know very little about art. But having seen this new Jonathan Yeo portrait of King Charles in the flesh — and there is so much more depth and complexity to it in person — I like it.”
However, not everyone was as appreciative. James Melville questioned the cost of the portrait to the British taxpayer, while another user commented, “If the point was to make King Charles look like a ghost emerging from a pool of vomit, then I’d have to say job well done.”
Some people even drew cinematic references in their postings about the painting, adding to the mixed reactions. Yeo began the artwork back in June 2021, when Charles was still the Prince of Wales. Charles became King upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, in September 2022, and his coronation took place in May 2023.
“When I started this project, His Majesty the King was still His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, and much like the butterfly I’ve painted hovering over his shoulder, this portrait has evolved as the subject’s role in our public life has transformed,” Yeo said at Tuesday’s unveiling.
The portrait will be on display at London’s Philip Mould Gallery from May 16 to June 14. From the end of August, it will be displayed at Drapers’ Hall. The portrait was commissioned to celebrate Charles’s 50 years as a member of the Drapers’ Company, which began as a trade group about 600 years ago and is now a grant-giving body.
The unveiling of King Charles’s first portrait since his coronation is drawing mixed reactions on social media. The portrait, by British artist Jonathan Yeo, measures about 2.6 metres by two metres and features Charles against a background of red hues, wearing the red uniform of the Welsh Guards military unit. A butterfly is just above his right shoulder.
The artwork had its unveiling on Tuesday at Buckingham Palace, with Charles and Queen Camilla present. King Charles met with artist Jonathan Yeo next to a portrait of the King at Buckingham Palace in London, England, on Tuesday.
“Cards on the table, I know very little about art. But having seen this new Jonathan Yeo portrait of King Charles in the flesh — and there is so much more depth and complexity to it in person — I like it,” Rebecca English, the royal editor for the Daily Mail in London, said on X.
Others were less charitable in their take on the portrait. “And how much did this rather bizarre portrait of King Charles cost the British taxpayer?” James Melville said on X.
Some people went for more cinematic references in their postings about the painting. Yeo started the artwork back in June 2021, when Charles was still the Prince of Wales. Charles became King upon the death of his mother, Queen Elizabeth, in September 2022. Charles’s coronation took place in May 2023.
“When I started this project, His Majesty the King was still His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, and much like the butterfly I’ve painted hovering over his shoulder, this portrait has evolved as the subject’s role in our public life has transformed,” Yeo said at Tuesday’s unveiling.
The portrait will be on display at London’s Philip Mould Gallery from May 16 to June 14. From the end of August, it will be displayed at Drapers’ Hall. The portrait was commissioned to celebrate Charles’s 50 years as a member of the Drapers’ Company, which began as a trade group about 600 years ago and is now a grant-giving body.
The first official portrait of King Charles to be unveiled since his coronation drew praise and pique after the red-hued work by British artist Jonathan Yeo was revealed at Buckingham Palace this week. Some reviews were scathing. “A formulaic bit of facile flattery,” read the headline on the one-star review in The Guardian. The reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle was more welcoming of the painting, which features Charles in the red uniform of the Welsh Guards with a butterfly hovering over his right shoulder. The portrait “is slightly terrifying, and I love it,” the headline read.
Art is subjective and can carry a multitude of messages — both from the artist, and in the case of portraiture, from the subject of the work. Interpretations of those messages can be as varied as those who view the works. Royal portraiture has its own history and purpose, dating back centuries.
“In the past, if a portrait painter was commissioned to paint a Royal Family member, it was to keep their likeness in memory, to archive their likeness and to present their likeness to the public … painting them in their riches, with their wealth around them, this kind of thing that was kind of like a propaganda tool,” said Ilene Sova, an associate professor of drawing and painting at OCAD University in Toronto, in an interview.
“After the camera was invented, portrait painters really had to be different or better than the camera, be more human than the camera,” Sova said. “So when you’re commissioning a portrait in 2024, you want the artist’s ideas, the artist’s concepts, the artist’s feelings about a person.”
As Sova sees it, Yeo’s portrait of Charles is “trying to bring concepts and ideas into the composition in a way that the camera can’t.” “Having this frenetic brush stroke, having these deep, passionate reds and pinks, putting this butterfly on the shoulder, having him kind of emerge from this background — they’re all strategies of contemporary portraiture to make you feel, to make you think, to make you have an emotional response that you wouldn’t get from a photograph.”
Sova thinks that through his painting, Yeo is trying to say something about someone emerging from a history and trying to create his own legacy, but that the legacy is not yet clear. That’s why, she said, the edges are blurry.
“I read one quote from Jonathan Yeo that he saw the King himself as a butterfly, that he’s emerging from a cocoon, that he’s becoming what he has been trained to become since he was a young boy. And this is kind of his moment in history.”
Judith Rowbotham, a social and cultural scholar and visiting research professor at the University of Plymouth in southwestern England, doesn’t think the portrait readily fits within traditional royal iconography. “And possibly, reading between the lines of Yeo’s comments, this was intentional — as part of an enterprise to make the monarchy seem more modern,” she said via email.
“It also started as a portrait of the heir to the throne and ended as the portrait of the King. So the direction was set several years ago.” During Elizabeth’s reign, Rowbotham said, a number of non-traditional portraits were painted of her and other royals.
“This is recognizably the King and facially it’s actually rather good as well, with the depiction of the face having depth and complexity. In that sense you could argue that this is in line with a more modern tradition of royal portraits and is even rather better than most.”
The mixed reactions to the painting are “pretty predictable,” Rowbotham said, and the portrait is doing its intended job: “making the King and the monarchy a topic for discussion.” “What could be worse for the individual monarch and the institution than not to be noticed or talked about?”
Source: The Associated Press, Reuters
