The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Monday 24 May 2004

The Real and Surreal Royals

The National Portrait Gallery in London has some really beautiful and important paintings of the British royal family. It also has a few that are perhaps a bit more, shall we say, “eclectic.”  

On a visit a couple of years ago, I was admiring the many exquisite portraits of the historical and modern royal family when I suddenly came across a gigantic portrait that momentarily stopped me dead in my tracks. Mind you, I firmly believe that art is a purely personal matter and am as open-minded as the next person, but my initial thought was one of complete dislike. 

The portrait – painted by John Wonnacott and unveiled in 2000 in celebration of the 100^th birthday of the Queen Mother – made the six most important members of the royal family, four corgis and the White Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace look like they were melting off the canvas. After quickly noting how miserably unhappy Prince William looked and that the corgis were larger than Prince Philip, I turned on my heel to walk away.  

Before I could make it to the stairs, however, a kindly docent stopped me to remark that I had not given the portrait ample consideration, then proceeded to present me with a complete and thorough analysis of the portrait’s finer points. Among the most interesting aspects of my lesson, I learned that Prince Charles is wearing a dress shoe on his left foot and a house slipper on his right foot, while one of the seams of the gigantic portrait cuts directly through his crotch. He also pointed out that Prince Harry’s left arm is that of a grown man rather than a teenage boy, and something resembling a roller skate is painted into the carpet. 

Needless to say, I was converted and began to find the portrait fascinating. I went so far as to buy a postcard of the portrait to keep for myself and even made a diary entry of the docent’s comments and my own thoughts. Since then, I’ve thought about and looked at the portrait many times and have increasingly found it intriguing less for the presence of the surreal touches and more for the accurate portrayal of the subject matter. Not that anyone except the Queen Mother looks completely normal, as the fishbowl effect of the portrait distorts everything except the central subject. No, the realism of the portrait is more in the presentation of the roles and positions of the royals it portrays. 

To begin with, Prince Philip is confined to the far distance of the portrait, slightly apart from the others with his face to the ground and a somewhat enigmatic grin. I laughingly wonder whether he had just made one of his infamous gaffes and was ordered by the Queen to stand back and consider his behavior. In all seriousness, his position in the portrait seems to be an obvious reference to his position in the family. As the husband of the Queen, his importance is merely tangential. As the father of the heir, he has served his purpose and now it’s the corgis, at the front of the picture, who share the Queen’s chamber. 

Unlike Prince Philip, the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince Harry all make up the center portion of the picture, surrounding the Queen Mother, who sits gracefully on a yellow sofa. Little can be said of the Queen, other than that her head is located in almost the dead center of the portrait and she is looking lovingly down on her mother, whose back is to her. As dutiful a daughter, I suppose, as she is a queen. 

For her part, the Queen Mother looks at her undoubted favorite, Prince Charles, who likewise gazes back at her. The Queen Mother’s arm is extended toward Charles and her hand is lightly closed as if she’s handing him something. Obviously, it wasn’t something he really needed, like his matching shoe or wise advice on how to be a beloved member of the royal family.  

As to Charles’ mismatched footwear, I am firmly of the opinion that it says something about his conflicting nature as a person and a member of the royal family. On the one hand (or foot, in this case), his personality is like the dress shoe, formal and traditional – the side of him that is committed to royal duty and carrying on the family traditions. On the other hand, the slipper represents the more relaxed and flexible aspects of his personality – the side of him that likes to garden and state his opinion about a plethora of subjects in a somewhat “un-princely” fashion. I will not even begin to speculate whether or not the seam through Charles’ crotch has any deeper meaning. 

In typical fashion, Prince Harry leans over the back of the chair in which his great-grandmother is seated and looks as though he is in thoroughly jolly spirits. He is the only person in the picture who is either not standing upright or positioned in any relative royal dignity. On a cursory glance at Harry’s face, it’s easy to think that he is looking at the Queen Mother, but a closer inspection reveals that he is not. Personally, it seems to me that he is looking at Prince William’s shoes or maybe the back end of one of the corgis. Why he would be looking at either one of these instead of his great-grandmother, I’m not sure, although I fancy his gaze represents either a lack of focus typical in a 15-year-old boy or his relatively carefree position among the party at hand. 

Prince William, on the other hand, seems to be carrying not only the weight of his now and future position, but also the sorrows of the past. The largest and most dominant figure in the portrait, the symbolism that he is the hope and glory of the royal family is blatantly obvious. With his hands in his pocket, his face slanted forlornly toward the floor, and a look of abject sadness on his face, he is neither enjoying his own importance and glory, nor is he completely satisfied with the present company alone. As no one in the portrait is paying any attention to William, Wonnacott leaves it entirely to the viewer to sympathize with him, a strategy that worked quite effectively on me.  

Granted, all of this is my interpretation, both of what the artist intended and of the royals themselves, but it certainly seems to me that this otherwise strangely surreal portrait is a more accurate reflection of the real people we venerate as royalty than the hundreds of more classic and formal portraits that permeate our collective consciousness. Personally, although I will always continue to be more aesthetically pleased by the classic portraits that represent royalty as flawless, near-divine creatures, I will never again dismiss so quickly portraits like Wonnacott’s that so skillfully capture the human and fallible side of the royal family.

Until next week,

- Tori Van Orden

To see “The Royal Family: A Centenary Portrait” by John Wonnacott, visit the National Portrait Gallery in London or follow this link - http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?search=sp&sText=The+Royal+Family%3A+A+Centenary+Portrait&rNo=0.

Also, compare this portrait of the modern royal family with the 1913 portrait of George V and part of his family, which was also painted in the White Drawing Room of Buckingham Palace - http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?search=sa&sText=Sir+John+Lavery&LinkID=mp02645&rNo=0&role=art.