Majesty travesty
April 13 2016
Picture: Guardian
The Central bank of Australia has issued a new $5 note – featuring a rather awkward portrait of the Queen. In The Guardian, Jonathan Jones looks at the progression of the Queen's portraits as she has got older:
It is a fine line between lending a modern monarch the magic of regal myth and telling obvious lies. As the Queen has got older that balance has got harder. The young woman who was crowned in 1953 was much easier to fit into fairytale fictions of royalty. More and more portraitists have tried to show the “real” Queen as she has aged, with less than happy results. Lucian Freud is one of the greatest British painters of all time, but his portrait of an unhappy Queen uneasily wearing the crown was not exactly a popular success. Profound realism or epic royal fail?
