“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.