Visual art review: The Queen - Art and Image

WE JINGLE it in our pockets. We stick it on our letters. The Queen's image is ubiquitous. It is not just current, it is currency. The catalogue of the exhibition, The Queen: Art and Image, proposes "It is likely that since her birth in 1926, Elizabeth has been portrayed more frequently than any other sitter in history." It would be hard to prove, but nevertheless is probably true. Her long reign spans the shift from the age of deference to that of universal first names; from a time when the supply of images was so limited that Picture Post was distinctive because it was illustrated, to the age of the paparazzi and all the visual flood of modern media. This exhibition traces how the Queen's image has been brought closer to us over the years, how she has learnt to smile and seem more ordinary, but nevertheless remains apart. She is not simply a celebrity, object of our prurient curiosity. Andy Warhol tried to turn her into a 20th-century icon as he did Elizabeth Taylor and Mao Tse Tung, but it doesn't work. She's an icon already. There's nothing to manipulate. Most of the other artists trying to give her image a contemporary slant here fall just as flat. Lucien Freud produces a grumpy caricature. Gilbert and George look laboured. With the exception of Pietro Annigoni, it is the photography that is most telling. It was a photograph by Dorothy Wilding, for instance, that was to provide the portrait of the Queen used on the first issue of stamps for her reign. It was replaced in 1961, but that second portrait is very similar and is still in use 50 years later, as though she is forever young. Stamps followed coins. The image of the living ruler appeared on the latter early in the history of money and indeed of portraiture. The mystique of the sovereign magically endorses the coin. The same mystique made kings and queens and, of course princesses, the inhabitants of fairy tales; the panoply of the Coronation in 1953 was clearly intended to endorse that fantasy. The Queen was photographed by Cecil Beaton in full coronation rig, wearing her crown and carrying the orb and sceptre. Still little more than a girl, it all seems too much for her. The gap between person and monarch is palpable. The picture was taken in Buckingham Palace, but a soft-focus view of Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey has replaced the background and the image is strangely artificial. Suitably so, perhaps.

The Awakening Conscience: Fascination with The Lady of Shalott

Alfred Tennyson was only 23 when he first published The lady of Shalott and said he got the idea from a 14th century Italian novella, Donna di Scalotta. Hunt and Rossetti were both inspired to illustrate the haunting poem, which tells how the tragic Lady of Shalott must remain in a tower, separated from the outside world and under a spell that means she dies when she escapes. Abandoning Shalott, her mythical island, the Lady steals a boat and finds time to write her name on the bows before drifting down the river to Camelot to find love. Sadly the curse means she dies before she arrives and is found (too late) by the gallant knight Sir Lancelot.  It is this scene which Dante Gabriel Rossetti chose to illustrate, where all Lancelot's has to say on finding the body is "She has a lovely face".   Rossetti wrote in a letter to Hunt that "illustrated editions of poets, however good are quite hateful things" but this didn't seem to stop him as he made numerous preparatory sketches before he was happy with his woodcut. The theme of unrequited love and unattainable women prepared to surrender everything is an enduring concept – but the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's fascination with The Lady of Shalott has to be seen in the Victorian context. Tennyson's trick is to leave the reason for the curse a mystery and defines the ideally vulnerable Victorian woman who pays the price for her ambition.

The lady of Shalott

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The lady of Shalot

The Lady of Shalott

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Thematic Analysis of “The Lady of Shalott” Originally written in 1832 and published in final form in 1842,“The Lady of Shalott” is a very strange and tautly ...

The Lady of Shalott: Shmoop Poetry Guide

Chew on this: Isolation The Lady of Shalott makes a confident choice to break free from her isolation. Although it costs her everything, it's still a strong ...