Artist     Jerry Hicks
Title      Portrait of HM Queen at RWA
Date      2000's
object    Painting
Media    oil
Size       89 x 70cm
Ref          904

Purchased for the collection to document the special occasion in January 2001

Other websites featuring this artist's work
www.rwa.org.uk/memfrm.htm

Portrait of HM Queen at RWA
Walter Bayes, a distinguished member of Sickert’s Camden Town Group, once advised me that “a portrait is a picture which has something wrong with the mouth” and that he would treat a royal portrait commission as “an Impressionist picture painted from photographs”. So when the Queen visited the RWA in 2001, numerous unposed photographs with hat, handbag and flowers formed the basis of two portraits.

In one, owned by Bristol’s Lord Lieutenant, the Queen looks up at a mobile, and in the RWA’s picture, she is momentarily framed by another painting from the RWA permanent collection in the background. This defines the location.

It is my opinion that portrait painters who relish particular place and moment should not feel diminished by the assistance of a lens. They are in the company of Carravaggio, Vermeer, Canaletto, Vuillard, Sickert and Hockney amongst others, and so far, “cher maître”, there have been no complaints about the mouth!

This picture is painted in oil on canvas, stuck to board with rabbit skin glue, which retains the pleasure of a canvas surface with less risk of damage.

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