cecil beaton portrait of queen elizabeth

Is it any surprise that, following the announcement of her death, Cecil Beaton’s splendid, imperial Coronation portrait, as glittering and pristine as a snowflake, was so widely reproduced? Taken inside Buckingham Palace, it set the bar high for every portraitist who followed, and still provides the classic example of the genre going, as it were, “all out”. It was the moment when her image – young, luminous, commanding – crystallised in the mind’s eye of her subjects. This was, if you like, Her late Majesty’s peak “iconic” period, when she appeared most glamorous and fairy-tale regal, by turns film-star and Royal goddess. Like, I suspect, millions of others, I will always have the most affection and respect for the late Queen’s portraits from the ’50s – even though they predate my own birth by decades. So, looking back, which among her phalanx of portraitists succeeded, and who failed?

And this transformation is reflected in the evolution of the Queen’s portraits. In its place, for good or ill, are the more spontaneous and informal, touchy-feely values of the current moment. The deference that defined Britain at the start of the so-called “new Elizabethan Age” has disappeared. And not only her, as both private individual and public monarch, but also the society over which she held sway for seven extraordinary decades. Already in 1947, five years before her accession, the News Chronicle was calling her “unquestionably the most publicised young woman in the world”.īeneath the surface of that fathomless ocean of imagery, in among the rocks of stiff official photographs and the weeds of the paparazzi’s long-lens snaps, are the visual pearls by which future generations will remember Elizabeth II. And thanks to the mass media, she became, according to the National Portrait Gallery, probably the most portrayed person in British history. With characteristic grace, she was, by all accounts – including that of Platinum Jubilee photographer Ranald Mackechnie – an amiable, chatty and surprisingly fidgety sitter.Ĭertainly, the roll-call of first-rank names who wanted to depict her, albeit often unofficially, was astonishing: Andy Warhol, Gerhard Richter, Lucian Freud, to mention only three. During her reign as Britain’s longest-serving sovereign, the late Queen was the subject of almost a thousand official portraits. And the likenesses of Queen Elizabeth II are no different – except in their profusion. They bind together countries, define how eras are remembered.

Cecil beaton portrait of queen elizabeth