King Charles III has a new experience.
On Tuesday, King Charles, 75, unveiled a new formal portrait of himself by the artist Jonathan Yeo — which many royal watchers were being speedy to label “disturbing.”
The portrait depicts Charles putting on the uniform of the Welsh Guards, of which he was manufactured Regimental Colonel in 1975, and was unveiled in the Blue Drawing Area at Buckingham Palace.
“It was a privilege and enjoyment to have been commissioned by The Drapers’ Company to paint this portrait of His Majesty The King, the to start with to be unveiled given that his Coronation,” Yeo explained, in a quote shared on the royal family’s official Instagram. “When I begun this challenge, His Majesty The King was nonetheless His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, and significantly like the butterfly I’ve painted hovering above his shoulder, this portrait has evolved as the subject’s function in our public lifetime has reworked.
Yeo added, “I do my finest to capture the lifestyle encounters and humanity etched into any personal sitter’s facial area, and I hope that is what I have attained in this portrait. To consider and seize that for His Majesty The King, who occupies this sort of a special function, was equally a great specialist problem, and one particular which I extensively loved and am immensely grateful for.”
Commenters were being not type to the portrait, which functions a ghostly-seeking Charles in opposition to a crimson backdrop.
“Does the initial portray symbolize all the blood on his fingers?” just one commenter questioned.
“100% assumed this was satire,” a different unimpressed supporter wrote.
One more spectator mused, “I would have liked this if it was any other colour than crimson. He really captured the essence of him in the experience, but the harshness of the red does not match the softness of his expression.”
“So sorry, this is a tiny creepy” a further royal watcher remarked, though yet another stated, “I’m sorry but his portrait seems like he’s in hell.”
Other royal watchers remarked that the painting appears to be “slightly disturbing” and “like he’s bathing in blood” and “like he’s burning in hell.”
The portrait — which will finally cling in Drapers’ Corridor — was commissioned in 2020 to rejoice the then Prince of Wales’s 50 a long time as a member of The Drapers’ Firm in 2022.
