In 1985, the American Pop artist Andy Warhol embarked on his largest portfolio of screenprints. Titled Reigning Queens, Warhol chose to focus his creative attention on the four female monarchs who were ruling in the world at the time, having assumed their respective thrones through birth right alone rather than marriage. These four figures included Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark and Queen Ntfombi Tfwala of Swaziland. Based on official or media photographs of these monarchs, the screenprint portfolio consists of four colour variants of each queen, amounting to sixteen images in total. The screenprints were created using a photographic silkscreen technique central to Warhol’s practice, employed profusely in both his prints and paintings. Warhol produced two editions of the Reigning Queens portfolio: forty ‘Standard Edition’ prints and thirty ‘Royal Edition’ prints. Screenprints from the ‘Royal Edition’ were adorned with ‘diamond dust’ – fine particles of ground up glass that sparkle in the light like diamonds – adding a glamour and extravagance to these images and further emphasising the regal allure of Warhol’s iconic subjects. The Reigning Queens series brings together many themes central to Warhol’s oeuvre, such as portraiture, celebrity, and consumerism.
“I want to be as famous as The Queen of England”
—Andy Warhol
Derek Hudson, Andy Warhol holding a screenprint of Queen Elizabeth II in his studio, The Factory New York, 1985. Image: © Derek Hudson/Getty Images, Artwork: © 2022 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by DACS, London The King of Pop based his screenprint of Queen Elizabeth II on a photograph taken by Peter Grugeon at Windsor Castle in 1975, and released in 1977 to honour her Silver Jubilee. Dressed in the Vladimir tiara, Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee necklace, Queen Alexandra’s wedding earrings, and King George VI’s Family Order pinned to the Garter sash, Warhol’s subject is adorned with her heritage. Grugeon’s portrait has become one of the most recognisable images of the Queen, featuring on both currency, postage stamps and various commemorative merchandise. This widespread reproduction of the Queen’s image directly connects to Warhol’s fascination with mass replication and consumption of celebrity imagery. Warhol combines Grugeon’s traditional state portrait of Queen Elizabeth II – steeped in centuries of British history – with his iconic Pop aesthetic by stylising her face with graphic lines and flat blocks of colour. With its primarily purple background, this work also features coral and pale-yellow graphic shapes printed from separate screens. In contrast to Warhol’s earlier prints where the appearance of impersonal, mechanical reproduction was essential to their meaning, these interventions – which became more frequent in the artist’s work from the mid-1970s – give the screenprint a deliberately ‘artistic’ look, as if added individually like a collage. Despite these works still belonging to Warhol’s large body of screenprints, the inclusion of ‘diamond dust’ in the ‘Royal Edition’ further encourages notions of uniqueness and artisanal manufacturing, amplifying the rarity of the four female monarchs featured in Warhol’s Reigning Queens series. By merging emblems of British monarchical history with his Pop art aesthetic, Warhol combines past and present in an image worthy of Queen Elizabeth II’s legacy as Britain longest serving monarch. Attesting to the importance of Warhol’s modernised portrait of the Queen, The Royal Collection Trust purchased all four colourways of her likeness from the ‘Royal Edition’ in 2012.
A stamp printed in Canada shows Queen Elizabeth II, Silver Jubilee, circa 1977. Image: Neftali / Alamy Stock Photo Provenance
Holland Art Gallery, Eindhoven
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2003Literature
Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann 335A
Artist Biography
Andy Warhol
American • 1928 - 1987
Andy Warhol was the leading exponent of the Pop Art movement in the U.S. in the 1960s. Following an early career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol achieved fame with his revolutionary series of silkscreened prints and paintings of familiar objects, such as Campbell's soup tins, and celebrities, such as Marilyn Monroe. Obsessed with popular culture, celebrity and advertising, Warhol created his slick, seemingly mass-produced images of everyday subject matter from his famed Factory studio in New York City. His use of mechanical methods of reproduction, notably the commercial technique of silk screening, wholly revolutionized art-making.
Working as an artist, but also director and producer, Warhol produced a number of avant-garde films in addition to managing the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground and founding Interview magazine. A central figure in the New York art scene until his untimely death in 1987, Warhol was notably also a mentor to such artists as Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Property from a Private Dutch Collection
43
Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, from Reigning Queens (Royal Edition) (F & S. 335A)
1985
Screenprint in colours with diamond dust, on Lenox Museum Board, the full sheet.
S. 100.1 x 80 cm (39 3/8 x 31 1/2 in.)
Signed and numbered 'R 3/30' in pencil (there were also 5 artist's proofs), with the artist's copyright inkstamp on the reverse, published by George C.P. Mulder, Amsterdam, framed.
Estimate
£200,000 - 300,000 ‡
Sold for £289,800
Rebecca Tooby-Desmond
Specialist, Head of Sale, Editions
T +44 207 318 4079
M +44 7502 417366
rtooby-desmond@phillips.com
Robert Kennan
Head of Editions, Europe
T +44 207 318 4075
M +44 7824 994 784
rkennan@phillips.com
Anne Schneider-Wilson
Senior International Specialist, Editions
T +44 207 318 4042
M +44 7760 864 748
aschneider-wilson@phillips.com
Evening & Day Editions
London Auction 18 - 19 January 2023
168
This lot is no longer available.
300
This lot is no longer available.
