Artist hits out at National Portrait Gallery as painting of Royal family is snubbed in revamp
A leading artist is outraged that his vast portrait of the Royal Family, commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) in 1999, has not been exhibited for 20 years.
Ahead of the Queen Mother’s hundredth birthday in 2000, John Wonnacott CBE was asked to paint four generations of the Royal Family. His spectacular 12-ft-high painting depicted the Queen Mother seated on a golden couch, surrounded by Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, the then Prince Charles, and Princes William and Harry.
Despite the opulent surroundings of the White Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace, with its lavish chandeliers and intricate gilding, the portrait was an intimate one, thanks to the presence of the Queen’s corgis.
Each of the royals sat for Mr Wonnacott for up to seven hours and he spent a year going in and out of Buckingham Palace, yet the painting - titled The Royal Family: A Centenary Portrait - has been relegated to a storeroom since its original display.
“I’m irritated,” the artist, 83, said. “Twenty years is a very long time.”
As NPG director, Sir Charles Saumarez Smith commissioned the work, describing it as “magnificent” in his 2022 biography of the artist.
But neither of his successors - Sandy Nairne and Nicholas Cullinan - have displayed it, beyond a brief loan.
Mr Wonnacott said: “The moment Sandy moved in, it came down. There’s nothing personal. I suppose he just didn’t like it - or, more likely, thought that it looked to him old-fashioned.”
Last Tuesday, the Princess of Wales officially reopened the NPG after its extensive three-year refurbishment, costing £41.3 million. It has around 20 per cent more space for its collection, but still no room for Mr Wonnacott’s picture.
He has only has good memories of this commission, though. He recalled that the late Queen was particularly chatty - talking about her busy schedule and her children: “She once said to me, ‘Mr Wonnacott, I get through 50 pairs of gloves a week’ - all that hand-shaking.”
Of another sitting, he remembered: “Before they banned the cooking outside the Palace, there was the smell of burgers coming up. She said, ‘oh dear, Andrew lives just above where we are and he absolutely hates the smell of that’.”
He added: “With the Queen, the chatter would be fairly one-sided, largely from her, bless her. She didn’t like sitting still and she did like to talk. We talked pretty much all the time.”
Asked whether he received any feedback from his Royal sitters, he said: “No, they’re marvellous like that. I’ve never painted anyone who has shown such complete disinterest in the way I’ve done their mouths or how they’re standing.
“I really did put them through it. The poor old Queen, besides getting her to stand up and pose for the last quarter of an hour of every session, sitting at the window with her chatting, then I’d say, ‘now, ma’am, the bad bit’ and she’d have to stand up and try out positions for me.”
Of Prince Harry, he said: “All he wanted to do was get out of Latin [class], so he could have sat posing for me all day. He was a very cheeky chappie. I still have an image in my mind - which I can hardly believe, because it was the time of the IRA - of seeing him walking down the road in the village, kicking a can… I would have thought he’d have a dozen people trailing him with guns.”
He added: “William looked after me very well, told me I couldn’t call him ‘Sir’.”
Mr Wonnacott recalled laughing with him about a garish waistcoat: “He turned up at one of the sittings in a kind of plastic leopard-skin thing. It was so hideous, I forced him to take it off instantly.”
He discussed drawing with the future King Charles, remembering that just as each of three sittings at Highgrove ended, a helicopter was ready to take him to his next appointment without a moment to relax: “You just don’t realise what a ghastly life these people have.”
He enjoyed talking to Prince Philip about science and sensed that each of the family members regarded him as their head as his name cropped up repeatedly: “The Queen Mother would say ‘is he looking after you?’ The family did laugh about each other in a very generous way.”
‘The exclusion in perverse’
Michael Daley, director of ArtWatch UK, the museums and galleries watchdog, said: “The NPG’s exclusion of Wonnacott’s vivacious, deep-space picture is perverse. The work amply meets the gallery’s constitutional purposes: its subjects are of national and historic significance and their means of depiction has proved of especial art-critical interest.
“For two decades, however, such virtues have been considered inimical to an institutional drive to reconfigure the historically accrued gender/ethnic composition of the collection’s subjects and artists - even when, for centuries, most of the national players had been - like Wonnacott - white and male.”
Sir Charles said: “It does deserve being shown in a public institution because it’s a work of increasing historical importance.”
The NPG said: “With over 250,000 portraits in our collection, we are only able to display a small percentage, However,…we regularly lend and tour our works.”
It added that the portrait was displayed between 2000 and 2006, and loaned to the National Trust’s Beningbrough Hall in Yorkshire between 2014 and 2016.
”The portrait is currently available to view by visitors and researchers by prior appointment.”
