On Tuesday, Buckingham Palace unveiled the first official portrait of King Charles III since his coronation in May 2023. The portrait, by artist Jonathan Yeo, is a striking red, and it depicts the king in his Welsh Guards uniform with a monarch butterfly landing on his shoulder.
In an interview, Yeo said that the idea for the butterfly came from the monarch himself. “I said, when schoolchildren are looking at this in 200 years and they’re looking at the who’s who of the monarchs, what clues can you give them? He said ‘What about a butterfly landing on my shoulder?’” the painter told the BBC. “In history of art, the butterfly symbolizes metamorphosis and rebirth.”
Yeo previously painted Queen Camilla in 2014, when she was still the Duchess of Cornwall. The new portrait was commissioned by the Drapers’ Company, a City of London–based livery company, and was drawn from four sittings with its subject, beginning in 2021 when the king was still the Prince of Wales. The first sitting was at Highgrove House, Charles’s property in Gloucestershire, and the final one took place at Clarence House, where the king and queen live while they’re in London.
Yeo, who has also done portraits of Tony Blair and George W. Bush, said he has noticed that politicians and public figures undergo changes when they get new roles. “They physically look and feel different when they’re in high office or out of it,” the artist said. “[The king] had already been gaining presence and stature by the time I started it, and it went up a level again when he became king, as you’d expect.”
According to the BBC, the queen said that she approved of the likeness, which will be hung in the Drapers’ Company galleries, among its portraits of other members of the royal family, including Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II.
Yeo was glad it got the royal seal of approval even though he took a different approach than he might have for a normal royal likeness. “If this was seen as treasonous, I could literally pay for it with my head,” he said, “which would be an appropriate way for a portrait painter to die—to have their head removed!”