The artist who painted the King’s latest portrait has revealed why the artwork is so red. The painting by Jonathan Yeo , which was unveiled by the monarch at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday, depicts the King wearing the uniform of the Welsh Guards against a red backdrop. The unusual portrait has divided opinion amongst royal fans and social media users, with some saying the large swathes of red made them “uncomfortable” and that it looked like the monarch was “in hell”.
Yeo said he “got over” the mixed reactions early on and was amused by the internet memes the portrait generated. “My [younger] daughter was much too keen to show me all the crazy stuff about the painting on TikTok,” he told The Sunday Times . “She’s 17 and .
.. had the best day of her life with all of the conspiracies about the painting, saying I’m a satanist and Illuminati.
” He added: “No matter what you do with a picture, no matter how obvious you think the story you’re telling is, someone’s going to read something else into it.”. As for why he chose to use so much red in the portrait, the 53-year-old said he wanted it to tone and distract from the King’s brightly coloured uniform.
“I thought the red will really distract,” he told the paper, adding that his solution was to instead cover the whole painting in crimson. “That may also have had psychological backing, because I had a heart attack [in March 2023] when I was painting this,” he says. “But certainly none of t.