Behind the Bold New Portrait of King Charles III

Recalling a little-noticed precursor to the painting--and understanding why a butterfly hovers above his right shoulder

“It’s remarkable actually, how it’s turned out,” King Charles III said after he unveiled his striking larger-than-life (8 ft 6 in by 6 ft 6 in) portrait by Jonathan Yeo in Buckingham Palace last Tuesday. “Yes, you’ve got him,” Queen Camilla had already pronounced during the King’s final sitting in November at their London home, Clarence House. Yeo later said her assessment satisfied him as “the reaction of someone who knows that person well because they know in a split second if you’ve captured them.”

“Initially mildly surprised”

Since the unveiling, art critics, celebrities, and myriad voices on social media have shared their widely varying judgments of the painting. Many have taken exception to the vivid impressionistic background blending pink and crimson that overwhelms all but the King’s face and hands, blurring his red tunic of the Welsh Guards but distinctly showing a Monarch butterfly hovering above his right shoulder. Some critics have called the color choice “satanic.” Others have said the King seemed to be “bathing in blood.” Yeo himself admitted that in one of their four hour-long sittings, the King himself was “initially mildly surprised by the strong color,” but he made no objection.

King Charles III with artist Jonathan Yeo after unveiling his portrait at Buckingham Palace on May 14, 2024

A novel combination of traditional and avant-garde

The painting startled me at first, but the more I have studied it, the more I’ve admired it, especially the depiction of the King’s face as thoughtful and kind yet confident, the lines of age suggesting his wide-ranging experience before taking the throne two years ago when he was seventy-three. It also reflects my view of him as a novel combination of traditional and avant-garde that took shape as I researched my 2017 biography, Prince Charles: The Passions and Paradoxes of an Improbable Life.

Although the official portrait was commissioned by the Drapers’ Company, a craft guild dating to the twelfth century that is now a philanthropic organization, the artist was Charles’s choice. The Drapers wanted to commemorate the fifty-year anniversary of his membership in the company in 2022, and Yeo was selected in 2020. He was well known to Charles for having painted Camilla and his father, the Duke of Edinburgh—both sensitive and skillful depictions. But the more significant precursor was a painting Charles commissioned in 2014.