After taking three months off to receive treatment following his cancer diagnosis, King Charles has fully returned to public duties — i.e., finding new ways to snub Prince Harry and getting mixed up in other weird royal controversies.
The scandal du jour involves an incredibly red, six-foot-tall portrait of the monarch by U.K.-based artist Jonathan Yeo, which was unveiled at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday. The painting has proved divisive: Some called it refreshingly modern, while others said it looks like Charles is “bathing in blood” or maybe “burning in hell.”
You probably have a lot of questions. As an American who read Prince Harry’s Spare, lived in London for a few months in college, and has access to Google, I believe I am fully qualified to answer all of them. But art is subjective, so I’ll let you be the judge.
Did King Charles approve this portrait?
Yes. The portrait was commissioned by the Drapers’ Company, a philanthropic institution, in 2020 to celebrate Charles’s 50 years as a member. According to Yeo’s website, he “had 4 sittings with the subject between June 2021 and November 2023 at Highgrove and later at Clarence House, working on it in between in his London studio.”
King Charles and Queen Camilla were on hand for the unveiling on Tuesday.
Do King Charles and Queen Camilla like it?
Maybe! Yeo told the BBC that the Queen dropped by during the final sitting and remarked, “Yes, you’ve got him.” He said Charles got a glimpse in its “half-done state … He was initially mildly surprised by the strong color but otherwise he seemed to be smiling approvingly.”
Charles flinched during the unveiling, but it seems that was due to the cloth falling on him, not the painting itself. He told Yeo during the ceremony, “Well I do congratulate you, it’s fantastic.”
Yeo joked, “If this was seen as treasonous, I could literally pay for it with my head, which would be an appropriate way for a portrait painter to die — to have their head removed!”
Of course, these days the British monarchy is less about beheading people and more about being reassuringly dull and unopinionated. So even if Charles did hate the painting, he probably wouldn’t show it.
What’s with all the red?
It was inspired by the Welsh Guards’ bright-red uniform. Charles has been regimental colonel of the Welsh Guards since 1975. Yeo said on his website:
The vivid colour of the glazes in the background echo the uniform’s bright red tunic, not only resonating with the royal heritage found in many historical portraits but also injecting a dynamic, contemporary jolt into the genre with its uniformly powerful hue / providing a modern contrast to more traditional depictions.
What else could the red symbolize?
Few saw the bold red and thought, Wow, that’s really “resonating with the royal heritage.” The New York Times summed up the most popular theories for what it’s actually meant to symbolize:
“To me it gives the message the monarchy is going up in flames or the king is burning in hell,” one commentator wrote under the royal family’s Instagram post when the portrait was unveiled.
“It looks like he’s bathing in blood,” another wrote. Someone else raised the idea of “colonial bloodshed.” There were comparisons to the devil. And so on. There was even a mention of the Tampax affair, a reference to an infamous comment by Charles revealed when his phone was hacked during the demise of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales.
Other comparisons included the “Everything is fine” meme:
Han Solo frozen in carbonite:
And the Vigo the Carpathian portrait from Ghostbusters 2:
Why is a butterfly landing the king?
Yeo said adding a butterfly was King Charles’s idea. He described the exchange to the BBC:
Yeo says it was Charles’ idea after they talked about the opportunity they had to tell a story with the portrait.
“I said, when schoolchildren are looking at this in 200 years and they’re looking at the who’s who of the monarchs, what clues can you give them?
“He said ‘what about a butterfly landing on my shoulder?’”.
The artist explained the symbolism on his website:
The butterfly approaching King Charles’s shoulder in the portrait adds a layer of narrative depth, symbolising both his known advocacy for environmental causes and his personal transformation. The Monarch butterfly is believed to have been named after an English King (William of Orange) due to its distinctive colour and this migratory species is already one of the most affected by climate change because of alterations in spring temperatures.
Jonathan Yeo explains: “Primarily a symbol of the beauty and precariousness of nature, it highlights the environmental causes the King has championed most of his life and certainly long before they became a mainstream conversation, but it also serves a compositional purpose, providing a visual contrast to the military steeliness of the uniform and sword. In the context of art history, a butterfly often the symbol of metamorphosis and rebirth, and thus also parallels the King’s transition from Prince to monarch during the period the portrait was created.”
Is is possible the artist is trolling King Charles?
There’s no obvious animosity between Yeo and the royals. He has painted many famous figures, from Malala Yousafzai to Idris Elba. He’s previously produced more straightforward portraits of Camilla and Charles’s late father, Prince Philip, so he probably seemed like a safe but not stodgy choice to paint Charles. The artist spoke of the king fondly in interviews.
But is it possible that Yeo included some more subversive messages in his portrait? Sure. Some of his work contains political messages. After a commission to paint George W. Bush fell through in 2007, Yeo used “clippings from hardcore pornographic magazines” to produce a portrait of the president of the United States. He website explains: “Yeo’s initial disappointment led him to making this playful but explicit, collage satirizing the assumed moral superiority of the extreme right in American politics.”
Where can I see this painting?
The portrait will be on public display at the Philip Mould Gallery in London from May 16 to June 14. Then it will be displayed at Drapers’ Hall, which is not open to the public.
So if you’re in London this summer you’ll have a chance to see Charles’s portrait. But honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it; there is a non-zero chance that it will convince you to kidnap a friend’s baby and you’ll end up doused in pink mood slime.
More on the royals
- How Are King Charles & Kate Middleton Doing? Latest Health Updates.
- King Charles Gets Snubbed and Heckled During Australia Trip
- King Charles Is ‘Desperate’ to See Grandkids He Evicted
