King Charles III, on the throne since 2022, has gotten a new portrait, what looks like a red-hot mess by Jonathan Yeo (b. 1970). At six by eight feet, it’s a statement picture. I’m certain it holds the wall. I haven’t seen it in person, so I can’t write too much about it. Its massive scale and abundance of reds need to be experienced in the rib-roast-raw flesh.
Yeo’s portrait, panned as it has been, reminds me of another grand, formal portrait, not of a king but of Winston Churchill. Both Churchill and his wife, Clementine, hated Graham Sutherland’s portrait of the prime minister, commissioned in 1954 by members of both Houses of Parliament and presented to him in a ceremony on his 80th birthday. Churchill said it made him look like “a drunk picked up on the Strand.” The portrait made it to Chartwell, his Kent home. Like the two princes in the Tower, it was never seen again. It’s believed to have been burned by the hired help at Mrs. Churchill’s suggestion.
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