Certainly, this pageantry is something it seems many portraitists can't resist, be that in Annie Leibovitz's glossy, moody, sumptuous series from 2007 or Julian Calder's Queen of Scots, Sovereign of the Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle and Chief of the Chiefs (2010). The Queen doesn't need to be #relatable: she continues to often be pictured in full regalia, like some sumptuous suit of protective armour, its theatrical grandeur a reminder that she is not like us, and nor, perhaps, should we wish her to be.
There's never been a true public "a-ha!" moment, when we think we see the woman behind the crown.Īnd Her Majesty is no doubt well trained in this: after 70 years of dutiful public service, of following what now feel like old-fashioned protocols, it's perhaps unsurprising that she doesn't want to let her guard down for some artist. We think of the art of portraiture as being about capturing some essence or intangible, defining character, yet portrait after portrait of the Queen fails to deliver any revelation. But it's also the perfect set-up for the monarch's lifetime of being photographed and painted – its very unreality both elevating and protecting her.ĭespite having sat for hundreds of official portraits – and inspiring countless unofficial artworks – the Queen remains inscrutable: a pure performance of a role. Looking at it today, it seems faintly preposterous – a fairy-tale image, the backdrop something that could practically have come out of an early hand-painted Disney film. The picture was actually shot in a room at Buckingham Palace, with Westminster Abbey represented by a theatrical cloth: a stage set on which the Queen plays her part. The backdrop is fake a mere image of the place where she was crowned queen. When Cecil Beaton photographed Her Majesty the Queen to mark her Coronation, in 1953, it was – as you might expect – in full pomp, with orb and sceptre, crown and robes, her golden throne standing tall amid the grandeur of Westminster Abbey… Except, well, it wasn't.
0 kommentar(er)
