Portraits of Queen Elizabeth II: The Artists’ Challenges

Scores of painters and photographers over the last seventy years have grappled with the formal portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II from life. These range from the celluloid fantasies of Cecil Beaton to the directness of Lucian Freud; the Renaissance-inspired divinity of Pietro Annigoni to the naturalism of Annie Leibovitz. Underlying all her official portrayals is an artistic conflict: the requirements of royal iconography and the demands of the usually conservative institutional commissioner, ve...