King Charles’s first official portrait is weird and wonderful

The first official portrait of King Charles III since his coronation has been unveiled. Both the artist Jonathan Yeo and the King should be delighted: the vast oil on canvas, which was seen for the first time at Buckingham Palace Tuesday, captures a remarkable likeness of the King.

One particular work of his might give his admirers pause

The painting is as respectful a piece of representative royal portraiture as might be imagined. Unlike some of the more experimental (if artistically interesting) pictures of his late mother, such as Lucian Freud’s 2001 effort — where Elizabeth II was compared to a prop forward or a corgi — this is a conventional, sympathetic presentation of the King. Yeo said he intended “to capture such an extraordinary and unique person, especially at the historic moment of becoming King.” The painting shows he has achieved his aim.

Yeo began the portrait in June 2021 at Highgrove, after winning Charles’s trust with a well-regarded study of Camilla that he painted in 2014. He completed it after the final sitting in November 2023. Plenty had changed in Charles’s life between first and last session. But the representation of Charles remains as accurate as can be hoped for in spite of the shifting times during which it was painted. Queen Camilla is said to have looked at the painting and told Yeo: “Yes, you’ve got him.”

Yeo’s work captures Charles’s mixture of kindness, wisdom and — dare I say it — potential irritation at the amount of time that the sessions must, inevitably, have taken, but Yeo’s choice of red background color is certainly unorthodox. Unlike the altogether more conservative portrait of Camilla, it’s a riot of ostentation. Yeo said that his aim was to create a “bit more [of a] dynamic and contemporary feel but at the same time [to allow] the focus to be on the face and the expression and the eyes.”

Inevitably, there is no explicit reference made to Charles’s illness, given both the dates of the painting’s creation and the potential tastelessness inherent in such an inclusion. Yet Yeo has allowed himself one artistic flourish, in the form of a butterfly — none other than the monarch butterfly, no less, itself an endangered species — hovering daintily above the king’s left shoulder. According to the artist, this was an idea arrived upon through consultation between subject and painter alike. Yeo commented that: “We had a conversation at the start about how it would be nice to have a narrative element which referenced his passion for nature and the environment and [he] said. ‘Why not have a butterfly on my shoulder, they often do that.’ I thought, ‘Oh that’s a good idea, I wish I had thought of that.’”

The painting is accomplished, intelligent and conservative, and if it is unlikely to pass down the centuries as a peerless work of portraiture, it is also a respectable first official representation of the (relatively) new king. Yet for all of Yeo’s status as portrait painter to the great and good, one particular work of his might give his admirers pause. Around a decade ago, when Kevin Spacey’s fame was at its zenith, Yeo painted him immortalized as Richard III from Sam Mendes’s production of the play at the Old Vic. Both Richard and, latterly, Spacey have faced high-profile downfalls. Let us hope that Yeo’s association with monarchy this time round has an altogether happier outcome.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.