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| Rupert Alexander Robert van Wijk oil on canvas 70 X 60 cm. |
With the frenetic pace of life that most people keep today, it can be quite difficult for a portrait artist to pin down a sitter long enough to complete a painting from life. Artists will often have to remain very flexible in order to accommodate the schedules of their busy subjects, but this frequently results in a painting which takes months or years to produce, when, under ideal circumstances, it could have taken only a small fraction of that time. Rarely would a portraitist expect a commission to last more than a decade, but then again, rarely is an artist asked to paint a portrait of Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth II.
In 1998, when London-born artist Rupert Alexander was asked to paint portraits of the British Royal Family, he was, at the age of 23, the youngest artist charged with that task since the 18th century. Sittings with HRH Charles, The Prince of Wales, and with HRH Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, were arranged, and Alexander was able to paint both men under natural light within Buckingham Palace, but the remaining subject of his commission, Queen Elizabeth, had a diary so full that she could not, at that time, spare a moment for Alexander to capture her likeness. It would take another eleven years before the Monarch was finally available to sit for Alexander, and nearly two more for the artist to complete the portrait.
In total, Alexander was granted only three sessions with the Queen, each one lasting just an hour. These meetings were planned to take place all within a four-month period, but with the many demands imposed on the Queen's time, the gap between the second and third sittings was prolongated from a few weeks to a year. To then make the most of this limited exposure to the Queen, Alexander spent his time at Buckingham Palace concentrating on Her Majesty's visage, while her clothing and even her hair had to be treated as incidental to his information gathering. Back in his South-London studio, Alexander then employed friends and family as body doubles for the Queen, and dressed these sitters in a custom-made copy of the Queen's jacket, and in a hairpiece he had hired a professional wigmaker to create. Eighteen months after the initial sitting, and twelve years after the commission had been made, Rupert Alexander's portrait of Queen Elizabeth II was finally unveiled at the Royal Warrant Holders Association in London, just days after the Queen's 84th birthday.
Alexander's portrait of the Queen gives proof to the adage that "Good things come to those who wait." Its stark and intimate portrayal reveals that the vitality and strength possessed by the Monarch are intrinsic to her character, and are not qualities bestowed upon her through the accoutrement associated with her position. It is a truthful portrait of the woman, and not just a picture of her title.
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Alexander's initial studies in art took place at the Chelsea College of Art, which, with the aid of a Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust awarded to the artist in 1995, were followed by studies at The Florence Academy of Art, and at the Charles Cecil Studios in Italy.
Of his palette, Alexander has this to say:
My flesh palette is a traditional limited palette: lead white, vermillion, yellow ochre and ivory black. Occasionally I add cobalt blue, primarily to cool shadows where necessary. In other areas of a painting I expand this palette to include French ultramarine, cerulean, alizarin crimson, cadmium red and cadmium yellow, and occasionally other colours like manganese blue, colbalt violet, red ochre and so forth. For the most part I use Michael Harding's paints as I find them to be the best tube paints available. The only exceptions are yellow ochre (I use ochre Romana, prepared by Zecchi of Florence - traditional yellow ochre with a small addition of raw sienna) and ivory black (I use Blockx as it has greater depth than any other I have found).
I used to grind all my own paints but the only colour I prepare myself now is lead white. White provides the majority of the body of the paint layer, so I find having a white of ideal consistency is crucial, and the only way to achieve that is to grind it oneself.
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| HM Queen Elizabeth II oil on canvas 52 X 40 cm |
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| HRH The Duke of Edinburgh oil on canvas 60 X 50 cm. |
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| HRH The Prince of Wales oil on canvas 60 X 50 cm. |
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| Christopher Darroux-Xavier oil on canvas 65 X 50 cm |
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| Sky oil on canvas 28 X 20 cm. |
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| Sigfrido oil on canvas 45 X 35 cm |
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| Hans oil on canvas 60 X 50 cm. |
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| Morten charcoal on paper 46 X 38 cm. |
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| Roger Knight, CEO of the MCC at Lords charcoal on paper 52 X 38 cm. |
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| Beata oil on canvas 55 X45 cm. |
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| Rob Fahey, Real Tennis World Champion oil on canvas 96 X 71 cm. "The portrait is of ten-times real tennis world champion Rob Fahey, seen on the court at Lord's cricket ground. The portrait was painted over the course of six weeks both on location and in the studio. Alexander's aim was to show the sitter's dominance in the sport and something of the atmosphere of the enclosed space."¹ |
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| David Burbidge oil on canvas 140 X 104 cm. |
¹BP Portrait Award 2012: Rob Fahey on Court, retrieved January 24, 2013 from [http://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/bp-portrait-award-2012/the-exhibition/exhibitors/bp-2012-exhibitor-2.php].