Winner of design for Memorial to Queen Elizabeth II announced

Today, the winner of the five shortlisted ideas for a permanent memorial to HM Queen Elizabeth II, who reigned for longer than any other UK Monarch, has been announced. 

Very much NOT just about a Queen sat on a horse!

Today we found out who won after an opportunity for the public to comment on the five shortlisted proposals.

The winner is Foster + Partners (designer of very big iconic projects) 

• with Yinka Shonibare (sculptor) 
• and Michel Desvigne Paysagiste (landscape architect)

To date the process has been as follows:

• September 2024: it was announced that the UK National Memorial to Queen Elizabeth II will be located in St James's Park, London
• February 2025: a Shortlist Of Design Teams Announced For National Memorial For Queen Elizabeth II
• May 2025: the Public were given a first look at Early Proposed Design Concepts for the Queen Elizabeth II Memorial site
• 24 June 2025: an announcement has been made that Foster + Partners will design the national memorial to Queen Elizabeth II

This is about memorialisation as environmental art and architecture together with story-telling combined with restatements of important values and the importance of connections. Hopefully it will also involve top class project management which will get the project completed as fast as possible - as this is a very popular public park.

It's a very BIG project!

"This is about an extraordinary woman and an extraordinary reign, about her commitment to public service, her duty, her commitment to the community, to the nation and the Commonwealth" Baroness Amos, member of the The Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee

I am left wondering whether the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square is no longer reserved for the Queen on a horse given this Memorial is going to be so much bigger and better!

Why did the Foster + Partners team win?

The Queen Elizabeth Memorial Committee’s selection panel found Foster + Partners’ design, balancing formal and informal elements, impressive and capable of creating an engaging landmark to endure for generations to come. The panel also valued Foster + Partners’ artistry, use of space, technical skills and their sensitivity to the memorial’s location.

The winning team also includes artist Yinka Shonibare and celebrated landscape designer, Michel Desvigne.

Where will the memorial be?

St James's Park will be home to the new Memorial and will be a hive of activity for however long it takes to complete.

This is the most royal of London’s Royal Parks. Shaped by generations of monarchs and bordered by three royal palaces, St. James’s Park is the home of ceremonial events in the capital. From royal weddings and jubilees to military parades and state celebrations – this is the park where history is made. Royal Parks

Map of the site within St James's Park
note how close it is to both Buckingham palace and government

The permanent memorial to the country's longest-reigning monarch will be placed in St James's Park, very close to Buckingham Palace and the Mall - the place for ceremonial and commemorative parades - in central London

This diagram (below) by Foster + Partners indicates how big the memorial will be reaching from The Mall through St James Park, across the Bridge and through to Birdcage Walk.

Open in a new tab to see an even bigger version.....

Diagram of how the scheme will work as a new pathway across the Park
Foster + Partners

What will the QE2 Memorial comprise? 

Royal Family Order of King Charles III: Portrait by Elizabeth Meek MBE PPRMS

The New Royal Family Order - created for King Charles III

The new Royal Family Order, which features a miniature portrait of the Monarch, was unveiled recently and this post is about how it came about. I interviewed the Artist who created the miniature portrait the day after it became public knowledge!

This post covers:

• What is a Royal Family Order?
• What does the Order comprise - and who did what
• The Miniature Portrait painted by Elizabeth Meek.

The new King Charles III Royal Family Order was worn for the first time at a reception and State Banquet for the Japanese Emperor and his wife at Buckingham Palace.  HM Queen Camilla wore the Royal Family Orders commissioned by her husband  and the late Queen.

The Royal Family Order

To provide some context - the Royal Family Order is a decoration conferred by the monarch on female members of the British Royal Family.

• They have been created and conferred since 1820. They are usually the first honours given by the new Monarch to the female members of his or her family.
• It's usual for the colour of the ribbon used to attach it to a gown to change as the monarch changes.
• It's typically worn on State Occasions - such as State Banquets for a Visiting Head of State. 

Royal Family Orders have been given since 1820. Usually they are the first Honours awarded by a new Sovereign to Royal Ladies. 

To date, Queen Camilla is the only Royal Lady to receive one. However I think it very likely that we will see both the Princess Royal and the Princess of Wales wearing one in the near future - as both were absent due to ill health at the time of the banquet.

Copies of the miniature portrait are made to create the Royal Family Order worn by female relatives of the King.

Below, The King and Queen with The Emperor and Empress of Japan at the State Banquet at Buckingham Palace.

 

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A post shared by The Royal Family (@theroyalfamily)

What does the order comprise?

Creating a Royal Family Order is very much a team effort - although I'm focusing on the miniature painting which sits at the centre of the order in this post.

The Royal Family Order comprises:

• a miniature portrait of the Monarch, typically at the beginning of their reign
• a jewelled encasing which features loose jewels from the Royal Collection
• a ribbon which is used to hang the portrait and its case - and to hide the method used to attach it to the dress worn for the occasion! The colour of the ribbon can vary.

The new Royal Family Order commissioned for the female relatives of King Charles III was created by the following individuals and comprises:

• a miniature portrait by leading professional miniature portrait painter Elizabeth Meek MBE PPRMS. 
• This was based on a photograph of the monarch wearing the uniform of Admiral of the Fleet and his array of decorations taken by the official Royal Photographer Hugo Bernard at Windsor Castle in 2023. This depicts the King wearing the ceremonial day uniform of a Royal Navy Admiral of the Fleet with the collar of the Order of the Garter, the Royal Victorian Chain, the riband of the Royal Victorian Order, the badges of the Order of the Bath and Order of Merit and various medals.
• A miniature Tudor Crown sits at the top of the jewelled casing that surrounds the portrait. This includes diamonds weighing 10.41 carat - which came from loose jewels in the Royal Collection. This was created by British jewellery designer Fiona Rae Goldsmiths has been designing and making jewellery for over 34 years, after graduating from Central St Martins and receiving a business loan from the Prince's Trust. She was recently granted a Royal Warrant from HM King Charles III. 
• The enamelled reverse of the case depicts the King's cypher in gold. The case and goldwork was engineered by Seth Kennedy, a scholar from the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust.
• The casing for the portrait is suspended from a pale blue moiré silk bow created by the leading milliner Philip Treacy who makes lots of hats for the Queen.
• His Majesty personally selected the colour of the ribbon, which is based on the Family Order of his great-grandfather, King George V. 
• This marks a change from the yellow that decorated the late Queen’s Order.
• Those wearing the Royal Family Orders usually arrange them in layers on the left shoulder.

You can see an image of Queen Camilla wearing the new Royal Family Order with that created for HM Queen Elizabeth 11 in this Tatler article Queen Camilla debuts King Charles' new Family Order at Buckingham Palace: everything we know about the honour

The Miniature Portrait - by Elizabeth Meek

Now on to the art involved!

The King Charles Portrait by Jonathan Yeo

I said last week that I'd reserve judgement - in terms of a blog post - until I'd seen the actual portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo.

So, this morning, I visited the Philip Mould Gallery at 18-19 Pall Mall in central London and took a look. In the company of a lot of other people I might add. The door was opening with new visitors almost the whole time I was there - with most people very surprised to find out that viewing the painting is free.

This post is about:

• background to the portrait
• how commissioning portraits of members of the Royal Family works 
• what I think about the portrait
• references to what other people think about the portrait - including articles which have commented on
• Yeo as a portrait Artist
• This portrait in particular
• the Internet memes

Head and shoulders and butterfly in portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo

Background to this portrait

The portrait was commissioned in 2020 by The Draper's Company to mark the 50th anniversary of Charles being a member of The Draper's Company. 

The Draper's Company was founded in the Middle Ages and its formal title is The Master and Wardens and Brethren and Sisters of the Guild or Fraternity of the Blessed Mary the Virgin of the Mystery of Drapers of the City of London.

It is one of the 111 livery companies. It's also one of the Great Twelve Livery Companies (i.e. the most important ones). Livery companies started out like guilds - a professional association for people doing the same thing to the same standard - in this case being a draper - meaning a retailer or wholesaler of cloth that was mainly for clothing or wool and cloth merchants. 

Today, not all members are drapers and the purpose of the company is largely as a charitable, ceremonial and educational institution. If interested, you can read about its heritage here

The Brief

The brief Jonathan Yeo got from the Draper's Company was specific about the size - to match other portraits they have.  In terms of size, it is very big. 

In terms of how the Prince of Wales (as he was in 2020) should be portrayed, their preference was for him to be portrayed in uniform, probably the Welsh Guards - to reflect the fact he was Prince of Wales. 

Or the way I looked at it, as a Livery Company whose heritage was about cloth, the clothing was important!

Which is interesting given how it turned out.

Half way through the portrait, The Queen died and the Prince of Wales became King Charles III. Obviously there were a lot of calls on his time during the early months of his monarchy. The last sitting was some 14 months after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

The butterfly suggests the monarch emerging from the "waiting" chrysalis stage. Prince Charles has of course been waiting some 71years (between 1951 and 2022) before he became King. He's spent most of his life as Prince of Wales.

The portrait

The portrait depicts him larger than life and wearing the uniform of the Welsh Guards, of which he was made Colonel in 1975. 

King Charles III portrait by Jonathan Yeo 
- with a man adding scale to demonstrate the size.

Commissioning portraits of the Monarch

 

The King sat for the painter four times, for around an hour on each occasion, with Yeo also working from drawings and photography in between. By the time it was finally finished at the end of last year, Charles was King.

I know and have spoken to several portrait artists who have painted the Monarch. They all say pretty much the same thing about the process.

• The client is the organisation who commissioned them i.e. NOT the monarch or other member of the royal family
• Monarchs are very busy people with lots of work commitments - hence the artist must always fit in with when they have space in their schedule
• Sittings tend to be very minimal compared to normal portraits. You can ask for more but you're unlikely to get more sittings. The only person they've made an exception for that I'm aware of is Lucian Freud - and even he didn't get what he normally wanted - so he went small instead!

all artists get a limited number of strictly allocated time slots in which to paint the Queen from life. As one artist put it to me once "You're not going to get any more so best not to waste any of the time" (from the description of the process of painting the Queen in my blog post about Portrait of the Queen by Miriam Escofet

• Sittings have to be scheduled to fit in with their other engagements - and plans for their days are fixed in advance many months in advance, hence last minute changes are difficult
• Different artists take a different amount of time to complete a portrait - but those who are efficient will tend to be finished in under a year. However the whole process may take several months - and commission to reveal will take even longer.

Jonathan had 4 sittings with the subject between June 2021 and November 2023 at Highgrove and later at Clarence House, working on it in between in his London studio. (Jonathan Yeo website)

Obviously, one of the issues in relation to sittings would have been these could only be held at times when it was possible to do so - with the rules on access and proximity during the Pandemic being crucially important. For this reason alone, it's not surprising that from commission to unveiling it's been about 4 years.

What I think about "King Charles III" by Jonathan Yeo

I don't like it. 

I particularly do NOT like all the suggestions and memes generated by the portrait which suggest variously:

• the red is symbolic of all the blood spilled on behalf of the monarchy over the years (blame it all on Charles - as if he had anything to do with it!!!)
• it's a satanic painting as in you can see a devil's head if you make it reflect on itself
• etc etc etc.

WHY would any organisation commission a portrait which 

• becomes a global meme - and not in a nice way?
• leads to views that it is supposed to represent all the blood that has flowed in the past and is, in the view of the commentators, associated with the Royal Family?

I can only imagine the Draper's Company had no sketch of the final painting to approve.
BIG mistake. 

The Artist formerly known as Prince

There have been a few posts on social media using this quip.

However it's worth remembering that King Charles III is an artist who is a keen painter in watercolours and who exhibits his paintings on a regular basis. 

He is also a Patron of drawing, traditional art and crafts in different locations both in the UK and abroad.

I remember when Prince Philip died I made reference in Prince Philip (1921-2021) - the painter to his interest in painting.  I guess this interest must have influenced his son. I'm hoping it passes on to more of his progeny.

Below you can find out more about his activities - when Prince of Wales in terms of: 

• watercolour painter
• timeline of exhibitions
• patron of art

Watercolour Painter

As a Prince, he painted from childhood. 

However he did not become dedicated to plein air painting of landscapes and nature in watercolour until the mid 1980s. After which he produced paintings of places he visited and generally produced about 30 paintings each year.

He has, up until now, painted under the name A.G Carrick. The A. G. relates to two of his names 'Arthur George' and the Carrick references one of his titles 'Earl of Carrick' - one of the Scottish titles held by the Heir Apparent.  I think I'm correct in saying that he has typically signed his watercolours AG. 

However he's no longer the Earl of Carrick as that title has now passed to his son! 

I wonder if being King might mean we no longer see his watercolours even if he continues to paint them.

Timeline of Exhibitions

First official portrait of Duke and Duchess of Cambridge unveiled at Fitzwilliam Museum

Yesterday morning the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge visited the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to see a new portrait of them both. This is the first official joint portrait. 

It was painted by British portrait artist Jamie Coreth. The artwork was commissioned in 2021 by the Cambridgeshire Royal Portrait Fund as a gift to the people of Cambridgeshire. It also marks the Duke's recent 40th birthday - on Tuesday this week.

More about both the portrait and the painter below.

The END of the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition?

It seems to me that the the largest and most prestigious watercolour competition in the UK has very probably died.

Without a death notice.

The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition website only contains details about the 2020 competition. 

It references subscribing to the ArtOpps newsletter to find out about the 2021 competition - but here we are in November 2021 - with no time left for a competition or exhibition this year - and there's absolutely no communication anywhere about what's happening.

 Let's look at the facts

• The planned exhibition at the Mall Galleries in early 2021 did not happen due to the lockdown - and indeed is not even listed on the Mall Galleries website as a past exhibition
• Prizes for the 2020 exhibition were much reduced compared to its heyday.
• The announcement of the prizewinners in 2020 is locked behind a paywall. Nor are they listed on the website - which mean it's of very littleo marketing benefit for the prizewinners
• The website has not been updated in a very long time
• The date of the last entry on the Facebook Page was 17th February 2021
• The Judges of the competition in years past have been some very prestigious people e.g. Director, Government Art Collection; Desmond Shawe-Taylor CVO, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures; Dr Kim Sloan, Curator, Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum and a Sunday Times critic who actually knew what he was talking about. Less so in the recent past. Indeed last year they announced the competition without announcing the Judges!

I last did a post about the exhibition in August 2020 when I wrote 10 changes in the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2020 Call for Entries

The significant reduction in prize money and other prizes really takes a LOT of prestige away from this competition. Which is incredibly sad as this competition has been seen as very prestigious for very many years - until recently.

I can do no more than highlight what I said in that post - and reiterate that the time has really come for a very major change.

Like I said last year (see Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2019 - Prizewinners & Exhibition),  in my opinion it's time for 

• another MAJOR CHANGE in the competition/of the main sponsor
• to one which wants to provide more credibility and prestige that this art competition has enjoyed in the past
• more involvement of painters in traditional watercolours as Judges.

This is because:

• 2017 was a dreadful year and I point blank refused to cover the winner
• 2018 was smaller and lacked impressive paintings (as made very clear in my review of the 2018 Exhibition. (see Review: Sunday Times Watercolour Competition Exhibition 2018)
• 2019 - recovered some ground - but not enough
• I didn't do a Call for Entries post. Too disillusioned by it. 
• Plus of course the prize money had been reduced compared to the past.  
• You can see what I thought of the exhibition in 10 Best Paintings in the Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition 2019. 

 

The impact of lockdowns

The lockdowns have very obviously had a massive impact on all sorts of exhibitions and art galleries. 

Nobody would have thought twice of an organisation or organisers who announced that there would be no competition in 2021 - but that the competition would be back in 2022.

But they haven't done that (see above re. lack of communication)

So why's that? Can't be bothered. Still mulling things over?

The reality

The reality is there is NO PRESTIGIOUS ANNUAL WATERCOLOUR COMPETITION in the UK any more.