King Charles’ portrait is artful propaganda

By Howard Chua-Eoan

So much ink (if not sputum) has been splattered since the unveiling of Jonathan Yeo’s portrait of King Charles III that I had to see the painting for myself away from the online muck. It’s on display at a gallery on Pall Mall in London until mid-June before it goes into the less accessible Drapers Hall, which is reached through circuitous alleys in the shadow of the Bank of England. For now, it is appropriately on exhibition one block down from Charles II Street. As works of art go, its crimson dimensions are impressive and its visceral impact undeniable if contrapuntal, evincing scorn and laughter or tenderness and admiration. That is all to the point and beside the point.

The arguing is beside the point because royal portraiture’s role through the millennia is to project power and legitimacy; thus, disputes about an artifact’s artistic merit are secondary to its propaganda value. But it is to the point because the Windsors are 21st century monarchs whose clout is circumscribed by constitutional precepts and can only exert influence in much less dogmatic ways, including social media contretemps. The commentary has certainly come in torrents of sweetness or bile as people debate whether the portrait is becoming or unbecoming of a king, whatever that means nowadays.

And so, for the moment, this is the most famous painting in the world. It’s the kind of global preeminence the ailing Charles hasn’t much enjoyed since succeeding to the throne in September 2022. Even the eye-rolling of those who have no patience for royalty (“There are real crises in the world, people!”) help keep him and his kingdom in the global conversation. They can take some comfort in a general election taking back the spotlight in the UK.

For much of history, a portrait of a monarch or national ruler was rarely about aesthetics. What was more important was the story being told, the version of history being propagated. This has been true since the time of Alexander the Great, when his rival successors used stylized images of his tousled hair — heroically swirled by the winds of war — as emblems of their own claims to power, indeed divinity. Roman emperors were accorded sacrifice as gods, hence the many images of even minor rulers like Galba (who ruled for just over seven months). Fast forward to the last century and you have Mao Zedong in China and Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union engaging in virtually the same kind of political idolatry. It continues in the North Korea of the Kims today.

Western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries also produced some of the more compelling examples of art as political spin. It was the era of the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and as Roy Strong, the former director of the National Portrait Gallery in London, wrote, it was an “alliance of art and power that was of such profound significance.” The best example of this was another English monarch, and the object of Strong’s expertise, Elizabeth I. The most magnificent of these was the so-called Armada portrait that commemorated her navy’s "miraculous" victory over the Spanish fleet sent to conquer the kingdom in 1588. There are three that have survived of the English goddess — for the queen is so otherworldly she is barely human in these portraits — who has soundly defeated her enemies. So effective was the propaganda that to this day, the world has forgotten that an English Armada launched against Spain the very next year ended up an expensive failure.

The Armada portrait of Elizabeth I in Queen’s House, Greenwich.

The divine right of kings gave way to constitutional monarchy after Europe’s age of revolution. And royal imagery was itself transformed. The prime exemplar of this was England’s second Queen Elizabeth. Her portraits — both photographic and painterly — documented her transformation across her nearly 71 years as monarch from vibrant young woman to stiff-lipped matriarch of the unruly “Firm.” She is still distant but also reflective of the travails of human existence. She’s not a goddess like her namesake but shares the wear and tear that we must all go through on the way to dusty death.

At the turn of the century, the painter Lucian Freud produced his portrait of the aging queen (who’d outlive him by more than a decade). It generated almost as much controversy as the latest one of Charles. One newspaper said it made Elizabeth look like one of her corgis. But for anyone who has seen the painting in person, it is the brushstrokes that tell the story, no longer really propaganda except in the Windsors’ retelling of their existence as fallible human beings bending toward decrepitude — though still remote. The textured queen after all still wears her crown, which has more spark than she does. It adds to the royal mystique.

Magazines can still depend on royal portraiture to perk up mostly moribund circulations. Hence, the regular appearance of glamorous images of the Windsors on covers around the world. This week, even as the debate over the king’s painting goes on, Tatler in the UK published its annual royal portrait issue, with a rendition of Catherine, Princess of Wales, by the artist Hannah Uzor. In case anyone misinterprets its intentions, the magazine’s cover line is “A Portrait of Strength & Dignity.” Kate, like her father-in-law, is undergoing cancer treatment.

Frailty has become a form of royal enchantment. That’s a long way from the imperishable Glorianas of Tudor times. The Yeo portrait of Charles was commissioned when he was still Prince of Wales, during his decades-long wait to be king. While the work’s red hues obscure Charles’ military uniform and look hellish, one intriguing detail has been thrown in to soften all the brimstone: a butterfly, unobscured — like the sitter’s hand and face — by all the scarlet and crimson. The explanation is that it is a symbol of his final emergence from his chrysalis to become monarch in his own right. I have another reading, inspired by his years as a princely mystic-in-waiting and based on the famous Taoist adage of the sage who woke from a dream. Is Charles a king dreaming he’s a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he’s king?