“Sorry, who is she meant to be?” The new Tatler portrait of the Princess of Wales is “egregiously, intolerably, jaw-hits-the-floor bad”, says Alastair Sooke, the Telegraph‘s Chief Art Critic. Here’s an excerpt.
Sorry, who is she meant to be? The Princess of Wales? You could have fooled me. Even by the standards of modern royal portraiture (and there have been many abominable likenesses of senior members of our royal family produced over the past century), Tatler’s new cover image – an “exclusive” portrait of the Princess of Wales by the British-Zambian artist Hannah Uzor – is egregiously, intolerably, jaw-hits-the-floor bad.
Whatever you made of Jonathan Yeo’s recently unveiled crimson portrait of King Charles III – which, as various wags observed, looked as if it had come pre-attacked with tomato soup by Just Stop Oil protesters – at least the damn thing resembled its subject.
But this? I’ve spent the past hour or so – time, incidentally, that I will never get back – scrutinising Uzor’s “likeness”, and, still, I cannot divine any flicker of resemblance between it and the woman it’s supposed to depict. At first, my editor thought it was meant to represent Meghan, Duchess of Sussex; its subject’s smirk made me think, initially, of Anne Robinson fronting The Weakest Link.
Has there been a flatter, more lifeless royal portrait in living memory? (It’s no surprise to learn that Uzor based her picture on video footage of, rather than personal sittings with, her subject. And be aware, this is not an official commission.) Beneath a Lego-like helmet of unmodulated, monotonously brown ‘hair’, this Princess of Wales has as much charisma as a naff figurine atop a wedding cake.
She holds herself with the bored bearing of an air stewardess about to begin an in-flight safety demonstration – which is additionally awkward, given that this was a job once performed by Catherine’s mother (a fact that, in years gone by, reportedly attracted the ridicule of William’s snobbish friends).
The Telegraph poll has had over 16,000 responses, 98% of whom said they don’t like the portrait.
It would of course be extremely uncharitable to suggest that the “British-Zambian artist Hannah Uzor” was a diversity commission by Tatler. But it would at least be an excuse for presenting such a dire piece of portraiture.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“The long overdue correction of Western democracies is now in train. The slow and painful process of restoring trust in public institutions might just have begun.”
Not true of the U.K.
The only slight cause for optimism is the impending destruction of the Tory party and their potential replacement with a actually conservative political force- but this is by no means certain.
Absolutely first class commentary on the state of the Western world today. In this country if Kneel does achieve the anticipated landslide our real battles will come over the next five years and if that is the case these five years will be shit or bust.
“The old Left-Right divide has become obsolete. Instead, the new divide is between the international technocratic elite in alliance with national elites against the interests, values and policy preferences of national populations.”
Or, in hux speak the Davos Deviants and their regional managers who make up the political executive along with the First Division Association. On top of this conglomerate of useless grifters are the largely corrupt judiciary, the management army of the NHS and our police forces.
It can only be a matter of time before the real battles begin. Sadly, I believe that blood will be spilled.
In 2017, Labour under their, supposedly, unelectable leader, Jeremy Corbyn won 40% of the vote. Under Starmer they’re about to win a landslide with 36%-38%.
Something’s wrong in the deepstate.
There’s something wrong with the notion that a ‘voter’ is someone whose only political right is to select his preferred party and that parties ought to be represented in partylament in proportion to their share of the popular vote. That’s not how the British system works and hence, such percentages are meaningless. In the UK, voters elect MPs for their contituencies. They don’t vote for parties.
So who elects the government?
As a British politician once famously put it: The purpose of the NATO is to keep the Americans in, the Russians out and the Germans down. I, for one, would welcome an end to this charade. The ‘public institutions’ which claimed to protect democracy and human rights by abolishment of human society and vaccine and mask mandates are thoroughly bankrupt and this includes the political system which begat them.
At the height of the Corona madness, at least one democratic (ie, from the US party) politician went on record with stating that ‘human rights’ never meant to include the right to breathe freely and to talk to and otherwise socialise with other humans as one see fit as humans, who are notoriously nothing but carriers of highly dangerous pathogens, simply couldn’t be allowed to do that for their own safety and such is the nature of these people, may they meanwhile all again have eaten a lot of chalk to soften their hideously croaking voices.
The ‘western’ mock-democracy willingly killed itself when the WHO demanded that in 2020.
Great article. I would however challenge the claim of “Islamophobia” – what does this even mean? It is an often used slur against anyone raising reasonable criticism of the encroaching march of theocracy and/or the denial of terrible crimes committed in the majority by members of one particular religion due to “cultural sensitivity”. For example the still ongoing “grooming gangs” situation throughout the country, although that should be called what it is – paedophile rape and slavery gangs.
https://x.com/TheCriticMag/status/1747540137129423263?s=19
The link leads to an article in the Critic (from January this year) which basically seeks to exploit the situation as feminist propaganda for the “war on women” story. That’s exceedingly poor taste as the Rotherham authorities who remained intentionally blind to this certainly included both men and women and the elephant in the room is not that the abusers weren’t investigate by men because they were also men but weren’t investigated by all kinds of officials because they were muslims of Pakistani origin and it was desired to avoid possible accusations of racism.
Poor taste is actually way too mildly put. This is not a (All) men seek to rape female children!! story. It’s one about muslim gangs getting a free pass from communal authorities.
The people we should be worrying about are the traitorous izlamoPHILES: queer starmer, ed davey, greens, and red tories who indignantly huff & puff if anyone dares to point out that izlam has 50+ countries it captured and we needn’t think our country exempt from that fearful outcome.
liblabcon treachery against the rightful people of this country knows no bounds and manifests itself in its most dangerous form as a 75-year-long mass importation of an alien death cult that anyone with a smattering of history knows has world domination as its aim either by conquering countries with swords or conquering them by outbreeding the natives.
smarmer has recently been poncing in and out of various muzlim ghettoes reassuring them that he as PM will protect their rights. He doesn’t give a flying f*** about the rights of British people to their own homeland untainted by the 7thC AD savagery of izlam.
He also promised them that he will ensure that they feel ‘safe, secure, protected’. Bugger the Brits, then, they will just have to put up with jihadis, terrorism, proliferation of mosques and the loud wailing therefrom, tales of blatant misogyny in sharia courts, honour killings, muzlims telling off Brits for eating when it’s their ramadamadingdong, plus the numerous other delights that disgust us such as the cruel halal killing of animals in defiance of our animal welfare laws.
Never forgetting the mass gang-rapes of hundreds of thousands of young British girls by paedophile muzlims, which smarmer as DPP 2008-2013 certainly knew about, but did NOTHING about. Unforgivable and Unforgiven.
Anyone who hasn’t a phobia concerning izlam is an ignorant fool. The ignorant fools are about to form another government.
Nick Robinson has always been, is now, and will always be a first class tosser with a leaky brain.
‘Sunday roast with all the trimmings’ is a very stupid way to characterise a person and invites the obvious riposte of characterising Robinson as food.
Imagine a cheap ready meal well past its sell-by date left to fester in a faulty fridge until the plastic film begins to bloat and swell. One prick off a fork and there is a puff of noxious air that turns the stomach. Anyone unwise enough to unwrap it to have a peek instead of hoying it straight in the bin will turn green and perform some projectile-vomiting.
Yes, Farage as food is very wholesome compared to a sickening BBC leftard hack.