How artists portrayed Queen Elizabeth II via her reign

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Written by Nick Glass, CNN

It was a kind of photogenic if traditionally insignificant moments when one (bona fide) icon fleetingly met one other. Queen Elizabeth II met Marilyn Monroe at a London movie premiere in 1956. The ladies in all probability had valuable little in frequent other than their age (each have been then 30), international fame and glamour. A cameraman recorded the second for posterity and, as luck would have it, Andy Warhol went on to make silkscreen prints of each ladies.

Warhol’s silkscreen prints of Marilyn are among the many first he ever printed, executed within the months instantly after her demise in 1962. His silkscreen prints of the Queen, nonetheless, are amongst his final and are much less well-known. They have been produced in 1985, as a part of his “Reigning Queens” collection, simply two years earlier than his personal demise.

With the Queen’s silkscreen, Warhol was — as all the time — enjoying with the concept of movie star and dissecting the connection between topic and public persona. The picture is predicated on an official photographic portrait taken in 1975, shortly earlier than her forty ninth birthday. The Queen, sporting a tiara, is blue-eyed, regal and good-looking, but in addition outlined and abstracted in blocks of shade.

The picture is synthetic, seductive and memorable. The prints — a few of which have been sprinkled with diamond mud, and have been issued in several colours in units of 4 — got here in a restricted version of 40. Higher late than by no means, the Royal Assortment Belief finally acquired a set for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012.

Photographs of Queen Elizabeth, taken by Dorothy Wilding in 1952, on display as part of 2012's "The Queen: Portraits of a Monach" exhibition at Windsor Castle.

Images of Queen Elizabeth, taken by Dorothy Wilding in 1952, on show as a part of 2012’s “The Queen: Portraits of a Monach” exhibition at Windsor Fort. Credit score: Steve Parsons/PA Pictures through Getty Pictures

In making display prints of her, Warhol bequeathed us a picture for artwork historical past and — it may very well be argued — of everlasting regal glamour. As with Marilyn, we’re left with Elizabeth as a Warhol icon. Simply as Henry VIII was immortalized (large, menacing, thick-necked, pasty-faced and piggy-eyed) by his court docket painter, Hans Holbein the Youthful, may this show to be a defining picture of Elizabeth II half a millennium therefore? Warhol evidently felt a celeb kinship together with his topic, as soon as remarking that he needed to be “as well-known because the Queen of England.”

Because the British historian David Cannadine as soon as famous, the Queen was “in all probability essentially the most visually depicted and represented particular person ever to have existed throughout your entire span of human historical past.” She reigned for therefore lengthy that we will solely hazard a guess as to the variety of pictures.

Propaganda pictures of Mao Zedong (who was additionally a Warhol topic between 1972 and 1973) have been a lot disseminated throughout his lifetime, however he was all the time made to look the identical: the benevolent founding father of the Chinese language nation. With the Queen, nonetheless, the photographs fluctuate in likeness and medium — work, pictures, sculptures and holograms, as properly that famously irreverent document cowl for the Intercourse Pistols’ 1977 single “God Save the Queen,” the place her eyes and mouth are obliterated by the names of the music and band.

The Queen by no means had a court docket painter as such. The closest candidate was in all probability the Italian artist Pietro Annigoni, who painted a portrait of her between 1954 and 1955, and once more in 1969. His first portrait of the younger Queen notably captured the general public creativeness. Framed towards what might go for an Italian Renaissance panorama and wearing Garter robes, she gazes past us dreamily but actually.

"Queen Elizabeth II" by Pietro Annigoni was commissioned by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in 1969.

“Queen Elizabeth II” by Pietro Annigoni was commissioned by the trustees of the Nationwide Portrait Gallery in 1969. Credit score: Oli Scarff/Getty Pictures

The American photographer, Annie Leibowitz depicted her in the same means half a century later, in 2007. Cloaked and solitary, the silver-haired matriarch seems to be straight down the digital camera’s lens. By then, she’d acquired used to all of it, having been endlessly photographed. She’d additionally been delivering Christmas messages on television since 1957.

Throughout her reign, formal painted portraiture was largely outmoded by pictures. And on the outset, artifice dominated. The society photographer Dorothy Wilding, who took the accession pictures in 1952, targeted on Elizabeth’s youth and sweetness, and had some prints hand-colored. Trend photographer Cecil Beaton, who took the Coronation footage in 1953 (and was virtually court docket photographer in all however title), went additional nonetheless. He promoted a fairytale imaginative and prescient, choosing theatrical backgrounds and a few even handed retouching.

Later British photographers — notably Antony Armstrong-Jones, the Earl of Snowdon and the Queen’s former brother-in-law; and Patrick Lichfield, certainly one of her cousins and the Earl of Lichfield — went for informality and naturalism, and we acquired to know her a bit higher within the course of. We have been supplied glimpses of the Queen and her household in home conditions, at play in addition to at work. Tv crews started to be given uncommon entry for documentaries.

Society photographer Cecil Beaton, who took this photo of Queen Elizabeth with her maids of honor on her coronation day in 1953, captured many of the late monarch's most significant occasions.

Society photographer Cecil Beaton, who took this photograph of Queen Elizabeth together with her maids of honor on her coronation day in 1953, captured most of the late monarch’s most important events. Credit score: Print Collector/Hulton Archive/Getty Pictures

However maybe the true revolution in our notion of the Queen got here from members of the press — and their telephoto lenses. They equipped a few of the off-guard, extra intimate walkabout moments. We acquired to see her reacting in shock to the Windsor Fort fireplace in 1992, solemnly and quietly inspecting the ocean of floral tributes to Princess Diana outdoors the gates of Buckingham Palace in 1997, and shedding a tear at her sister’s funeral in 2002. These pictures made her appear extra human and sympathetic.

Two of the good (and most commercially profitable) artists of the twentieth century each tackled portraits of the Queen however in very other ways. In 1967, Gerhard Richter produced an oil painting primarily based on a broadcast {photograph}. (The 12 months earlier than, he had captured her in a lithograph.)

An observer takes a closer look at Gerhard Richter's 1967 painting of the Queen.

An observer takes a more in-depth have a look at Gerhard Richter’s 1967 portray of the Queen. Credit score: Rune Hellestad/Corbis through Getty Pictures

As was the German artist’s means, his picture was faintly blurred, the colours and her options exaggerated. The Queen seems to be unreal, if not surreal. She’s nonetheless recognizable however someway creepily not herself; she seems uncomfortable, as if suppressing a nervous giggle. It is unclear why Richter painted her like this — he by no means supplied an evidence.

In 2000, Lucian Freud started portray the Queen. It wasn’t a fee in a proper sense. The Queen’s former non-public secretary (and buddy of Freud’s) Robert Fellowes, had pursued the concept for some years. It took a lot negotiation, however across the time of Fellowes’ retirement in early 1999, Freud finally agreed to do a portrait.

The sittings have been unfold over many months, between Could 2000 and December 2001. After they started, the artist was 77; the Queen was 74. The end result, painted in heavy impasto, was tiny (simply 9 by 6 inches) and predictably controversial. Freud’s painterly forensic eye was unflinching.

Lucien Freud's painting of the Queen seemed the antithesis of earlier, romanticized depictions of the Queen.

Lucien Freud’s portray of the Queen appeared the antithesis of earlier, romanticized depictions of the Queen. Credit score: Sion Touhig/Getty Pictures

Freud had requested she put on the diadem crown, as seen in a few of Wilding’s pictures. The crown is worn at a slight angle. She is pensive, a bit downcast, a bit weary maybe. She has seen and been via so much. The portray was — as many newspapers identified — unflattering, the antithesis of Annigoni’s dreamy Fifties portrait. Freud made a present of the portray to the Royal Assortment. The Queen by no means publicly commented on it.

Wouldn’t it have been to Prince Philip’s style? In all probability not. As an beginner painter himself, he knew exactly what he favored. His non-public assortment features a portray of the Queen on horseback on the Trooping the Colour ceremony. It was painted by his buddy, the post-impressionist English artist and royal favourite Edward Seago. In Grenadier Guards uniform (white feathered hat and crimson coat), the Queen seemed merely and recognizably magnificent.

Prime picture: A print of Queen Elizabeth by Andy Warhol is adjusted by an worker of Bonhams Auctioneers.

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