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| The Duchess of Cambridge gets an undertaker's makeover | The Duchess of Cambridge gets an undertaker's makeover |
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| I cannot compare Paul Emsley's portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge with the subject's living presence, though I spent much of last summer touring the Luberon with a pair of high-powered binoculars in hope of a sighting. The head and shoulders portrait looms, larger than life, and under glass, from a black purgatorial background. | I cannot compare Paul Emsley's portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge with the subject's living presence, though I spent much of last summer touring the Luberon with a pair of high-powered binoculars in hope of a sighting. The head and shoulders portrait looms, larger than life, and under glass, from a black purgatorial background. |
| My perspicacious colleague Charlotte Higgins likens the portrait to a poster for the Twilight vampire film franchise. What is really spooky is how characterless Kate looks, sharing a corridor-like gallery with portraits of Germaine Greer, Salman Rushdie, Mo Mowlam and Anna Wintour. These people all have quirks, eccentricities, odd bodies and minds – and have been painted thus. The portrait of the duchess lacks even ordinary liveliness, let alone any mischief or youth or individuality, though these are evidenced, just around the corner, by Mario Testino's photographs of her. | My perspicacious colleague Charlotte Higgins likens the portrait to a poster for the Twilight vampire film franchise. What is really spooky is how characterless Kate looks, sharing a corridor-like gallery with portraits of Germaine Greer, Salman Rushdie, Mo Mowlam and Anna Wintour. These people all have quirks, eccentricities, odd bodies and minds – and have been painted thus. The portrait of the duchess lacks even ordinary liveliness, let alone any mischief or youth or individuality, though these are evidenced, just around the corner, by Mario Testino's photographs of her. |
| There really is almost nothing to say about it as a painting. Were it a photograph, it would be the sort that hangs in a high street photographer's window as a testament to the wonders of digital improvement. It looks like a photograph of a painting, rather than a painting that aspires to the condition of the photograph. Compositionally, it might be a passport picture, except smiling wouldn't be allowed. Had Velázquez painted the one visible earring he would have had fun rendering the highlights with little pips of impasto. If Rembrandt had approached the nose, he would have done something potatoey with it. No such luck. | There really is almost nothing to say about it as a painting. Were it a photograph, it would be the sort that hangs in a high street photographer's window as a testament to the wonders of digital improvement. It looks like a photograph of a painting, rather than a painting that aspires to the condition of the photograph. Compositionally, it might be a passport picture, except smiling wouldn't be allowed. Had Velázquez painted the one visible earring he would have had fun rendering the highlights with little pips of impasto. If Rembrandt had approached the nose, he would have done something potatoey with it. No such luck. |
| Emsley left such artistic ambitions and inquiries at the door. It's all a bit tentative and dutiful. You think he'd want to go for the folds and creases, life's inevitable nicks and tics, but there aren't any. The trouble is, I suppose, that not only does the duchess looks untouched by life, what life there might be has been disguised by her cosmetics, which conspire with Emsley's approach to flatten and blend to such a degree that the head barely registers as an object at all. The painting itself has no grain, no surface or texture either. Perhaps the artist is saying something about celebrity and the ubiquity and emptiness of images, about how constant mediation flattens things out, but I doubt it. | Emsley left such artistic ambitions and inquiries at the door. It's all a bit tentative and dutiful. You think he'd want to go for the folds and creases, life's inevitable nicks and tics, but there aren't any. The trouble is, I suppose, that not only does the duchess looks untouched by life, what life there might be has been disguised by her cosmetics, which conspire with Emsley's approach to flatten and blend to such a degree that the head barely registers as an object at all. The painting itself has no grain, no surface or texture either. Perhaps the artist is saying something about celebrity and the ubiquity and emptiness of images, about how constant mediation flattens things out, but I doubt it. |
| The portrait is as soundless and smooth as an undertaker's makeover. Emsley has approached his subject with the sort of artistic safe pair of hands that could smother the life out of anything. The duchess's presence isn't even spectral, let alone vampiric. She doesn't look older, as some have complained, just already weary of being looked at. Painterly convention has got to her, though she claims to like it. Were it a portrait of anyone else, it would be of no interest whatsoever. | The portrait is as soundless and smooth as an undertaker's makeover. Emsley has approached his subject with the sort of artistic safe pair of hands that could smother the life out of anything. The duchess's presence isn't even spectral, let alone vampiric. She doesn't look older, as some have complained, just already weary of being looked at. Painterly convention has got to her, though she claims to like it. Were it a portrait of anyone else, it would be of no interest whatsoever. |
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