Charlotte Metcalf is the Editor of Great British Brands and for three and a half years was co-presenter of Break Out Culture, a weekly podcast with former Minister of Culture, Lord Vaizey. She currently podcasts for The Oldie magazine and is the magazine’s supplements editor. She is also a film-maker, author and journalist. She reports regularly for Thomas Lyte on cultural events, exhibitions, fairs and publications that are of interest to the communities of the craftspeople we represent and celebrate, with a particular focus on goldsmiths and silversmiths.
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Royal Warrant Holders and the general public alike will delight in a new exhibition of Royal photographs at the King’s Gallery, writes Charlotte Metcalf.
Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography is the first exhibition to open since the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace was renamed the King’s Gallery – and it’s a magnificent way to herald in a new reign and era. Walk into the first room, painted a stately royal blue, and you are greeted by Hugo Burnand’s splendid official portrait of King Charles on Coronation Day. The only other photograph in the room is a smaller black and white one of Prince Albert (later George VI) and Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, taken exactly 100 years earlier to celebrate their engagement. While the latter photograph was never publicly displayed, Burnand’s photograph was globally and immediately disseminated, showing the astonishing pace at which photography has evolved over a century.
(Above image: Hugo Burnand’s Royal Photograph of King Charles III on Coronation Day)
What begins at a sedate pace, speeds up as you move through the four rooms, echoing the Royal Family’s increasing engagement with photographers and their techniques, which began in earnest in 1840. 150 works are on display by over 40 globally renowned photographers, from Cecil Beaton and Lord Snowdon to Annie Leibowitz, David Bailey and Rankin. All are drawn entirely from the Royal Collection so it might be the one chance we have to gain a real insight into how the Royal family has been presented over the last hundred years.
Royal Warrant holders like Thomas Lyte will be particularly interested by the amount of innovation the Royal family embraced, exposing themselves as willing subjects to the lenses of experimental photographers, often using ground-breaking techniques. A number of women were hired by the Royal Family, like Madame Yevonde or Dorothy Wilding, who was the first woman to appointed as official photographer at the Coronation of George VI in 1937.
(Above image: Dorothy Wilding’s Royal Photograph of King George VI and family)
There is much of Cecil Beaton’s work, spanning half a century, including his first ever Royal commission, a 1927 portrait of Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, and his last, a 1979 portrait of Princess Michael of Kent. Perhaps his most endearing portraits are his three of the Queen Mother. Booked for just 20 minutes in 1939, the pair got on so famously that he spent five hours with her, establishing a close bond. The resulting photographs show her on a lovely summer day in the garden. Beaton has clearly brought on a happy, light-hearted mood. Wearing a frothy Hartnell gown and wide-brimmed hat, she twirls a lacy parasol playfully. Curator Alessandro Nasini reminds me that the Queen Mother said the Royals should thank Beaton for ‘representing them as really quite nice – real people’.
(Above image: Cecil Beaton’s Royal Photograph of the Queen Mother on a summer’s day)
There is Beaton’s famous 1968 portrait of Her Majesty the Queen, taking inspiration from Pietro Annigoni’s celebrated portrait that was painted for the Fishmongers’ Company in 1955. Beaton replaces the velvet mantle of the Order of the Garter with a simple woollen Admiral’s boat cloak, and strips out the dreamlike landscape, creating the iconic, timeless portrait.
Beaton’s last photograph Elizabeth II was taken in 1968 when he requested a sitting with Her Majesty, ‘anxious to do something different’ for his upcoming retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery. ‘This is my favourite portrait of Her Majesty,’ admits Alessandro. ‘Again, Beaton photographs her in the plain Admiral’s cloak, stripped of her Royal insignia and shown as a woman alone, solitary and bearing the great weight of monarchy.’ The effect is amplified by the fact she turned her head, a moment captured by Beaton.
(Above image: Cecil Beaton’s Royal Photograph of Elizabeth II, 1942)
In the fifties, as the Royal Family enjoyed new-found freedoms, younger photographers emerged. On show are many photographs by Antony Armstrong-Jones, who went on to marry Princess Margaret and become the First Earl of Snowdon. We see his photographs of Princess Margaret relaxing in Mustique and Alessandro draws attention to his 1967 portrait of her that demonstrates so clearly ‘their deep personal connection and intimacy.’
There are photographs by Patrick Litchfield and Norman Parkinson’s photographs of Princess Ann taken in 1971 to celebrate her 21st birthday, presenting her as a fashionable, independent, free spirit. One wall shows some of the 2007 photographs of the Queen by Annie Liebowitz, the first American photographer ever to take her official photograph. There are also Leibowitz’s 2016 photographs of the Queen with her corgis at Windsor and one with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. We can also see the photographs Liebowitz took ten years later to mark the Queen’s 90th birthday in which she made full use of the imposing White Drawing Room as a backdrop, allowing the opulent gold curtains to echo the gold in the Queen’s dress. There are Hugo Burnand’s splendid official portraits of Charles on his 60th birthday, and at his Coronation with Princes William and George.
The exhibition culminates in a big red room which contains a plethora of instantly recognisable images that have, thanks to the advance in digital technology, been shared worldwide. Here there is a blend of respect for tradition and modernity while the photographers’ individual styles shine through.
There is Andy Warhol’s 1985 portrait, glimmering with ‘diamond dust’ (in fact ground glass) and based on Peter Grugeon’s 1975 photograph, released in 1977 to celebrate her Silver Jubilee. Grugeon’s photograph was famously later used on the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen album cover.
There are Hugo Rittson-Thomas’s multiple images of the Queen and of Prince William, using mirrors in a dark room and echoing Van Dyck’s portrait of King Charles I in three positions, which hangs between Rittsen-Thomas’s photographs. ‘Rittsen-Thomas combines lineage and heritage with a sense of familiar intimacy,’ notes Alessandro.
(Above image: Andy Warhol depiction of Queen Elizabeth II hangs in the King’s Gallery)
There are David Bailey’s four charming playful photographs of Her Majesty in which he has captured her sense of fun and humour. There is the 2012 Equanimity lenticular print on a lightbox of Her Majesty by Rob Munday and Chris Levine, using the ground-breaking technique of layering 8,000 high res digital images. There are photographs by Rankin and Jane Bown and Litchfield’s well-known photograph of Her Majesty laughing happily from aboard the Royal Yacht Britannia in 1972. There are are Jamie Hawksworth’s photographs showing a domestic side of Camilla at home for her 80th birthday in 2022 for Vogue. There are, of course, many images of the late Princess Diana, notably Mario Testino’s photographs of her at her most natural, informal and beautiful.
Fittingly dominating the room is a gigantic photograph of King Charles by Nadar Kander. It was commissioned by Time Magazine in 2013 and bears Kander’s text, ‘A good portrait asks questions. Not attempting to answer them.’ It’s a perfect note on which to end a portrayal of a century of monarchy through the lenses and eyes of some of the world’s most gifted photographers. It shows not just the progression of photographic techniques but also how the monarchy has become far more accessible and open as it became easier to disseminate photographs widely. Indeed, leaving the exhibition, it’s hard not to believe that the advent of digital photography has largely been responsible for enabling us to have a closer relationship with the monarchy.
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All images displayed in this article are courtesy of the Royal Collection Trust
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