“Talkative”, “active”, “accessible and smiling”… Queen Elizabeth II’s portrait painters tell us about their encounters with the sovereign

The immense stress, the aching head, the rumbling stomach. Antony Williams will remember this moment in 1996 all his life. For the first time, he set up his equipment on the thick carpet of Buckingham Palace to paint the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. The latter celebrates its 70 years of reign from Thursday, June 2. his face accompanies the British on stamps, banknotes and therefore official portraits, exhibited in museums or public buildings.

“I was expecting the queen and saw a pack of corgis come into the room. I thought they were going to attack me!”, remembers the portraitist. Eventually, Her Majesty’s hounds don’t bite him, and the Queen arrives a few minutes later. At the time, he was only 30 years old and had just been chosen to paint the queen. He is in panic. “The queen was very talkative, very active. At times she was restless, a real moving target!” In total, he will be entitled to seven one-hour sessions with her. The beginnings are hesitant.

“I wasn’t sure what to do because I hadn’t been briefed before the first date on how I should address her. It was tricky. So I asked her private secretary who was in the room: ‘Can you ask Her Majesty to sit like this?'”

Antony Williams, portrait painter to Queen Elizabeth II

at franceinfo

Miriam Escofet’s experience is more recent. She painted the Queen’s portrait during the first Covid-19 lockdown. She tells a sovereign “very accessible and smiling” but refuses to recount their exchanges during the two one-hour meetings that Elizabeth II granted him, confidentiality of exchanges obliges. “I can’t.” She admits, however, that she was impressed by her model. “She releases something, she radiates”she says.

Miriam Escofet just ventures to tell an anecdote related to the delivery of the painting. “I was explaining everything to her and I was very proud of the little details, of this cup on which I had painted animals. I felt very clever. Suddenly she said: ‘Yes but there is no tea in the Cup.’ She said that in a very funny way.” This portrait inevitably marked his career and earned him dozens of interviews around the world. She knows that painting a historical figure during her lifetime will not happen to her again.