Reactions have ranged from “She looks as if she has got a toothache,” from one art critic, to “a thought provoking and psychologically penetrating contribution to royal iconography” from the director of the National Portrait Gallery, Charles Saumarez Smith. The one person not expressing an opinion on Lucian Freud’s new portrait of the British monarch is the subject herself.
The diminutive picture – it measures just 9.4in by 6.08in – portrays the 70-year-old royal with all the artist’s trademark quest for “raw truth”. Bold strokes conjure a heavy, deeply shadowed and rather stern gaze, while her familiar iron-grey, hair curler-boosted waves curve rigidly under a diamond diadem.
“She just won’t like it,” commented one royal observer. Buckingham Palace was keeping mum on the Queen’s response to the work by Britain’s “greatest living painter”, however.
The 79-year-old Lucian Freud, grandson of the sex psychologist and brother of gourmet and former Liberal MP Sir Clement Freud, has a reputation for being picky about who he paints. In the past he has captured Lord Rothchild, Baron Thyssen and a nude Jerry Hall on canvas, but neither Princess Diana nor the Pope made the grade.
The new portrait is a gift from the artist to the royal collection and will hang in the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace as part of next year’s Golden Jubilee.
Photo: © Alphapress.com
