Early in January 2013 The National Portrait Gallery unveiled the first portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge. Artist Paul Emsley explains some details of the steps he followed in the process of painting the portrait.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and answer the questions below. Despite the fact that some of the questions are a bit lengthy, the anwers aren't. Keep them short and do not write complex notes that may distract you from what is actually being said.
This activity is suitable for Intermediate 2 students.
1 Did the Duchess express her opinion of the portrait?
2 How many days did the Duchess and the photographer meet before the actual sessions began?
3 Why does he prefer working from a photograph to the real model?
4 When the artist talks about the ‘actual picture that we felt was the greatest potential’, what different parts of the head does he mention?
5 What part of her physique does everyone recognize the Duchess by?
6 Why did the artist slightly change the colour of her eyes?
7 Why doesn’t the artist like having too many things in the background?
8 What is the Duchess like in the artist’s opinion?
To check your answers, you can read the transcript below.
The Duchess explained that she would like to be portrayed naturally, her natural self as opposed to her official self.
I met the Duchess at the Portrait Gallery to discuss the portrait, the first time. We then had a meeting at Kensington Palace to discuss it again. And after that, she came down for the day, and we did many, many photographs, which I worked from; and then we had the second session. And for many years, I’ve worked from life, and I find I’m always worried about the sitter/session. I’m always worried; are they cold – are they cold, are they hot, are they comfortable? And photography today is so accurate and so good that it’s really so much easier just to take photographs and work from that. It just seems to work very well for me.
That was the actual picture that we felt was the greatest potential for the painting, because it had, it just seem to have a nice shape of the hair, the light on the face, and the general expression generally. And then I make close-ups, which give me all the details of things like the eyes. This was more for the earring and for the mouth, the curls of the hair and for the bow of the blouse.
We did say in the beginning that we were going to make a feature of her hair, because it is a strong feature about her, and everyone I think recognizes her partly through her lovely hair. And I tried to form a sort of a – just sort of a – I mean I didn’t – it wasn’t conscious, it just happened that this rather nice circular movement occurred.
I’ve altered the color of the eyes slightly to match the color of the blouse, and the blue background. And that has obviously occurred as well in the earring. And quite often in the shade, there is a shadow on the face in the modeling. And all that just helps to create a kind of a harmony, you know.
Most of my work actually is quite simple really, I mean, I don’t have lots of things in the background, and so on. And I do like large faces, I find them strong, contemporary. And I’m interested in the landscape of a face. And the way in which light and shadow fall across the forms, that’s really my subject matter. So to have anything else in there really is just an interference.
She struck me as enormously open, and generous actually, and a very warm person to meet. So I after initially feeling it was going to be an unsmiling portrait as you know – I think actually that it’s – it was the right choice in the end to have her smiling, because it does, that’s really who she is, I think.
