The artist who painted the King's last portrait has revealed why the artwork is so red.
The painting by Jonathan Yeo, which was unveiled by the monarch on Tuesday at Buckingham Palace, shows the King wearing the uniform of the Welsh Guards against a red background.
The unusual portrait has divided opinion among royal fans and social media users, with some saying the large swathes of red made them “uncomfortable” and that it looked like the monarch was “in hell.”
Yeo said he “overcame” the mixed reactions from the beginning and was amused by the Internet memes the portrait generated.
“My [younger] “My daughter was very interested in showing me all the crazy things about painting on TikTok,” he said. Sunday weather. “She's 17 and…she had the best day of her life with all the conspiracies about the painting, saying I'm a Satanist and Illuminati.”
He added: “No matter what you do with an image, no matter how obvious you think the story you are telling is, someone will read something else into it.”
As for why he chose to wear so much red in the portrait, the 53-year-old said he wanted to tone it down and distract from the King's brightly colored uniform.
“I thought the red would be really distracting,” he told the newspaper, adding that his solution was to cover the entire paint in crimson.
“That may also have had a psychological support, because I had a heart attack [in March 2023] when I was painting this,” he says. “But I certainly wasn't aware of any of that; it was just: I like this color.”
He revealed that he had difficulty painting the King's medals and uniform as he had never done before.
“I probably spent more time on the medals than the face because I knew what I wanted to do with the face when I started,” he said.
“The more I painted the medals, the more they were the first thing you saw because they were so bright. I didn't want it to be about that, but they had to be there somewhere. She would put them on (and then it would be too much) and rub them. “It was a tug of war.”
The new painting measures 8ft 6in by 6ft 6in and was commissioned in 2020 to celebrate the then Prince of Wales's 50 years as a member of The Drapers' Company.
Yeo had four sessions with the King, starting when Charles was Prince of Wales in June 2021 at Highgrove, and then at Clarence House. The last session took place in November 2023 at Clarence House.
The portrait will be on public display for a month at the Philip Mold Gallery in London, from May 16 to June 14. Admission is free.
