What place does royal portraiture have in modern society? – Text by Isaac Hodgson
I had built up a prejudice against King Charles’ new portrait before I saw it. My immediate reaction to images online, along with mostly everyone else’s, was a rejection of the bright red; it felt angry, aggressive, and bloody. This, paired with a tourist-filled walk through Pall Mall, had me prepared to write about how much it disgusted me.
Whilst being looked down upon by Charles, I started talking to Gary, a fellow victim of the King’s stares. He thought it was a marvel, that “if painted in a traditional way, with red curtains and all, it would have flown under the radar. It’s the perfect level of abstract to depict Charles and be its own piece of modern art”. It’s still not my favourite painting in the world (I find it too imposing) but my conversation opened my eyes to seeing it as a skilled piece of work.
Standing in front of a towering picture of our king is not the place to take a consensus, however. The younger generation seem content to mock the painting (asking some friends about it I got a warm “who gives a shit”), and social media reflected this when it was unveiled. It’s being used as a great chance to poke some fun at the largely disliked royals. Some compare Charles to Dracula, others the red as the bloodshed of the British Empire. There are even reminders of Charles’ fantasy he outlined in “Tampongate”, his raunchy conversation with Camilla. The painting itself has become a backdrop to public opinion.
Regardless of any amount of recoil the painting has received (and may continue to), there’s no denying that Jonathan Yeo is a skilled portrait artist. As one of the UK’s most prolific current portrait artists, on top of various canvases for the royal family he has painted all kinds of celebrities: Idris Elba, Grayson Perry, and Cara Delevingne, just to name a few. His paintings shift from subject to subject in form and content to better suit his sitter. Some lean more heavily on abstraction than others, faces blurring into soft, messy backgrounds, contrasted with his more serious and politically charged subjects. Elements of personality are always present; Grayson Perry stares nonchalantly at the viewer with coquette bows tying up his hair, symbolic of his feminine dress.
Omnipresent throughout Yeo’s portraiture are reminders that you are in fact looking at a painting. His use of untidy brushstrokes, sketched figures, and abstract backgrounds channel this, allowing for conscious open interpretation; these are not to be taken at face value, though they may be what draw you in. Why, then, the red? What can we interpret from it, and what does Yeo hope to convey?
Naturally Yeo didn’t have any ill intent to defame the King in his painting, but he doesn’t aim to airbrush him too much, either. Charles’ wispy grey hair is a clear reminder of his age. With regard to the background, Yeo intended to “minimize visual distractions, allowing people to connect with the human being underneath”. Whether this has paid off or not is up to its viewers, but he is taking criticism in good humour.
The painting seems to have drummed up hysteria from a certain group of fanatical Christians, too. Naturally in support of the monarchy, they treat the painting as a grave error. In a strange turn, they have assigned it the mark of the devil, as when the painting is mirrored and flipped around, a vague, red outline of a triangular head with Charles’ arms acting as make-shift horns creates a demonic face. It reminds me of a time in secondary school when people would play songs in reverse, claiming to hear devil worship.
The image is being used to spread anti-LGBTQ+ messages on platforms like X. The bloodied white horse that ran through the streets of London recently is also being roped into the ‘conspiracy’, fearmongering and spreading hate crime. It’s no surprise that Alex Jones, everyone’s favourite far-right podcast host, has jumped on the bandwagon too. The whole thing really is a stretch of the imagination. It’s a groundless accusation against the backlash the painting has received in defence of the royal family; I highly doubt that Yeo is in allegiance with the devil.
Yeo’s is not the first of the royal family to be painted in a more contemporary, abstract form. Queen Elizabeth II’s portrait by Lucien Freud similarly divided opinion when it was first shown to the public in 2001. Freud does not hold back his artistic style for the sake of the past Queen, or to turn public favour. His figurative strokes, as his paintings tend to do, break her majesty down to her most human form, her crown a perfect contrast to her at her most intimate and common. Her eyes look nowhere in particular, there’s a dark shadow above her lip and outlining her chin; it’s distant from the lofty image that historically royal paintings have aimed to achieve. The Queen here is nothing more than herself, not trying to portray an image.
Perhaps it was an expectation of aristocratic subjects to be painted in a powerful and honourable light that sparked the outcry Freud’s portrait received. Upon its unveiling people argued that the Queen should “put him in jail for such an ugly portrait”, others fittingly comparing her to a corgi.
Historically, royal portraits have held an important role in society. They were often one of the best chances for people to see what their ruler looked like and thus had to convey a certain image. Painting the royals’ likeness was obviously important, but the real aim was to spread a sense of unreachable power and wealth, along with however else the sitter wanted their public to feel. Queen Elizabeth I was a prime example of this. She “used portraits as a form of propaganda”, to “be seen as a strong leader, capable of resisting the threat of invasion”.
The royal family itself holds much less power than it did all those years ago (also an upsetting painting wouldn’t lead to a beheading), so the need to show itself in a certain light has definitely faded. Yeo also points to our shifted relationship with the royal family through modern journalism, photography, and social media.”On the one hand, we know they’re real people with quirks and personality traits. We’ve seen that much more of them. On the other hand, we still want to buy into the mysticism and the fairy tale that they’re different from us, that there’s a bit of magic there.” This is what he tries to capture in his painting, between the power of the sword in Charles’ hands and his somewhat unflattering expression.
Peter Conrad writes for The Guardian on the importance of the portrait as a final lasting image. “Portraits of kings, presidents, prime ministers and the like are effigies, meant to replace the mortal being. Once the official image has been fixed in place, the living subject can be sent off to die.”; he compares the unveiling of the portrait to a premature funeral.
Gen Z’s relationship with the royal family is much different to that of older generations. Largely, we are disillusioned with the monarchy as a whole; since 2011, YouGov has tracked our relationship with the royal family. In recent years, 64% of 18 to 24-year-olds said they would have voted against a monarchy, a statistic which I am a part of.
Again, thanks to modern photography and our ever more intimate relationship with the royals, we have endless images to select from to remember them by when they pass. Whilst it’s a lovely idea to have an artistic portrait as the lasting image of the royals, our current relationship with them doesn’t agree with this. When Prince Phillip died in 2021, it was not a regal portrait that was sent around, but a garish picture of him looking worse for wear after leaving a hospital, people joking that he had been dead for some time already, and in an ironic twist, met the devil.
The flinch King Charles made in reaction to the unveiling of his own portrait demonstrates how we all felt when seeing it. It’s not what we expected, but I’d argue that’s a positive thing; art is supposed to make us think, and elicit a feeling. It serves its purpose to get people thinking about their feelings towards the royal family, if in a slightly offbeat way. Yeo himself sums it up best: “It’s strangely reassuring to know a painted portrait can still spark so many conversations in an image-saturated age”.