The King has unveiled the first completed official portrait of himself since the coronation. The portrait, by British artist Jonathan Yeo, was commissioned in 2020 to celebrate the then Prince of Wales’s 50 years as a member of The Drapers’ Company in 2022. Discussing the controversial bold colours used across the canvas, Yeo conceded that “there will always be people who disagree with you, people that don’t agree with how you’ve done it.” Report by Covellm. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 You never know how long these things are going to take.
00:02 They tend to have a bit of a life of their own.
00:04 When he became king halfway through, that in a way made it more interesting.
00:09 I was able to sort of see the shift in the body language.
00:13 Sometimes you sort of talk about these things metaphorically,
00:16 but actually to be able to visibly see someone gain stature
00:19 and become more comfortable in themselves is a really interesting thing.
00:22 You use these and a bit of the recollection of being with them.
00:26 And what you want is to recreate the sense of being with someone,
00:29 which is a moving person obviously, a three-dimensional one,
00:33 and try and show a few elements of their personality,
00:37 sometimes contradictory ones.
00:39 He'll pretend to laugh at your jokes.
00:42 He's funny and curious and interested.
00:45 He's good at putting people at their ease.
00:48 All of us have our biography etched into our faces.
00:51 There's more of the weight of the world on his shoulders once he's become king.
00:55 But he hadn't lost a sense of humour
00:57 and his curiosity about lots of different things,
00:59 always asking questions and interested in everything.
01:02 I didn't sense anything wrong particularly.
01:06 And also I think when you've got cancer,
01:09 it's often towards the end of the treatment that it actually takes a more physical toll.
01:15 I mean there's always people who disagree with you on how to paint these things.
01:21 People agree with how I've done it,
01:23 but I think it's a bit different from the other royal portraits I've seen.
01:26 The colour was part of that,
01:28 just playing with this idea of mysticism
01:30 and the way we still buy into the idea of the royal family being a bit different from us in some way.