The King has a new portrait

[YaMuvva]

Maybe it’s because I know nothing about art but my initials thoughts are…”Huh”

From the artist:
"It was a privilege and pleasure to have been commissioned by The Drapers' Company to paint this portrait of His Majesty The King, the first to be unveiled since his Coronation. 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. I do my best to capture the life experiences and humanity etched into any individual sitter's face, and I hope that is what I have achieved in this portrait. To try and capture that for His Majesty The King, who occupies such a unique role, was both a tremendous professional challenge, and one which I thoroughly enjoyed and am immensely grateful for."

You don’t know what I’m thinking or what my intentions are.

So, for ease and to make it simple as to how I’m actually feeling, I’ll do it in the form of art.

And I’m out. Mark Twain was spot on. So was Mr Shaw.

.

I never said you weren't allowed an opinion.
Please check my posts. @Noguarantees67

But you said “You are reacting with your opinion of Charles in mind”

And I replied that my opinion of the painting stood independently of what I think of Charles.

However, you will concede that's not what your original post conveyed.
I have no idea how many houses Charles has. My opinion of the portrait remains the same.

It seemed more like an opinion of Charles to me. Or a post only written to convey negative feelings.

But of course, that’s “allowed”.

No I will not concede that. My original post conveyed an opinion of the painting.

And you said that my opinion was based on whether I liked Charles or not, and not on the merit of the painting itself. Which was not true.

The two are very different things.

Please don’t try and twist things around Isolde thank you.

You seem to be doing just that. And getting a bit tetchy.

Please don't try to twist what I say.
I criticised the portrait. You added criticism of the man.
Thank you.

Look I am trying to stay reasonable but you are yet again picking away at anyone who doesn’t love Charles or the royals!

This is nothing to do with the painting so you are doing the very thing you are accusing me of! Please stop it!

And it doesn’t take three of you to make the point!

I don’t really love Charles or the Royals. I did adore the Queen.

Please don’t start with the “three of you” as if we are somehow interrelated. We are not.

I gave my opinion. I’m allowed to do that, no?

Eh? Who's saying anything about who loves or doesn't love the royals?
Where did that come from?
It's a portrait. You're bringing personal aspects of the subject in. I'm not.
I like to enjoy art (see my comments about Margaret Thatcher qv).

I suggest we leave it there because I have other things to do and I am sure this exchange is getting very tedious for others.

Three of you?
How odd. Sometimes people agree on here or disagree. Par for the course.

This sounds so very familiar. You suggest everyone else leave it?

SirSidneyRuffDiamond · 15/05/2024 18:32
I really love it and my eye is drawn to his face and hands. To me it shows that the uniform (representing his long years as the Prince of Wales and also the ceremonial aspects of the royal family) is fading/merging with the background and allowing the essential man behind the throne to shine.

@IsoldeWagner

I think this says it for me. One amongst the many interpretations of the painting on this thread (positive and negative) which have been worth reading.

I note that you like the butterfly and that others have likened it to a transformation. I see that.

I’m afraid what I saw in my mind’s eye was Charles releasing a butterfly at a Norfolk (I think) Nature Reserve with a joyful ‘wheeeee’.

I love it.

I find portraiture fascinating. I never did Art at school, so did one of those seminars at the National Gallery, it was so interesting.
That's why I mentioned the portrait of Margaret Thatcher - it was amazing, and really captured her, regardless of personal feelings. There was one of Diana where she just looked a bit weak and insipid and I don't think it captured her.
Good artists can convey so much, but of course, as we have all noted, it's very subjective.

I think Jonathan Yeo has done a fantastic job getting people taking about art and portraiture. DH who has no interest in art or the RF even mentioned it!

Mine also. Saw it in the news in US.

This just came in my email from NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/style/king-charles-iii-portrait-jonathan-yeo-red.html

I can't read that, Alice - what's the gist?

Royal portraits, as a rule, tend to be fairly staid, predictable affairs. Full of symbolism, sure, but generally symbolism of the traditional, establishment kind: symbols of state, of office, of pomp and lineage.
Which is why the new official portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo, the first since the king’s coronation, has created such a controversy.
A larger-than-life (7.5 foot-by-5.5 foot) canvas, the portrait shows the king standing in his Welsh Guards uniform, hands on the hilt of his sword, a half-smile on his face, with a butterfly hovering just over his right shoulder. His entire body is bathed in a sea of crimson, so his face appears to be floating.
Though the butterfly was apparently the key piece of semiology — meant, Mr. Yeo told the BBC, to represent Charles’s metamorphosis from prince to sovereign and his longstanding love of the environment — it was the painting’s primary color that almost instantaneously gave new meaning to the idea of “seeing red.” It was practically begging for interpretation.

“To me it gives the message the monarchy is going up in flames or the king is burning in hell,” one commentator wrote under the royal family’s Instagram post when the portrait was unveiled.

“It looks like he’s bathing in blood,” another wrote. Someone else raised the idea of “colonial bloodshed.” There were comparisons to the devil. And so on. There was even a mention of the Tampax affair, a reference to an infamous comment by Charles revealed when his phone was hacked during the demise of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales.

It turns out that red is a trigger color for almost everyone — especially given the somewhat meta endeavor that is royal portraiture: a representation of a representation, made for posterity.

In his interview with the BBC, Mr. Yeo noted that when the king first saw the painting, he was “initially mildly surprised by the strong color,” which may be an understatement. Mr. Yeo said his goal was to produce a more modern royal portrait, reflecting Charles’s desire to be a more modern monarch, reducing the number of working royals and scaling back the pageantry of the coronation (all things being relative).

Still, the choice of shade seems particularly fraught given the … well, firestorm the king has endured since his ascension to the throne.

Consider, for example, the continued falling out with his second son, Prince Harry, and the publication of Harry’s memoir, with its allegations of royal racism; the related calls for an end to the monarchy; Charles’s cancer diagnosis; and the furor over the mystery about Catherine, Princess of Wales, whose own cancer diagnosis was revealed only after increasingly unhinged speculation about her disappearance from public life.

Queen Camilla, who has been through her own ring of flames, reportedly told the artist, “You’ve got him.”

It’s hard to imagine Mr. Yeo didn’t anticipate some of the reaction to the portrait, especially in the context of his past work, including portraits of Prince Philip, the king’s father, and Queen Camilla, which are more traditional depictions. Indeed, the last time a royal portraitist attempted a more abstract, contemporary interpretation of their subject — a 1998 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Justin Mortimer, which depicted the queen against a neon yellow background with a splash of yellow bisecting her neck — it produced a similar public outcry. The Daily Mail accused the artist of cutting off the queen’s head.