“I want to be as famous as The Queen of England.”
—Andy WarholIn 1985, the American Pop artist Andy Warhol turned his attention to royalty and embarked on his largest portfolio of screenprints, entitled the Reigning Queens series. The series features the four female monarchs who reigned at the time, having assumed their thrones by birthright alone: Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and Queen Ntfombi Tfwala of Swaziland. In depicting some of the world’s most recognisable female figures and appropriating their most widely circulated images, the series encapsulates Warhol’s fascination with fame, mass-media, and the extremes of social hierarchy. 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.
From as early as the sixteenth century, royal portraiture was an incredibly potent tool for expressing power and authority. Often bedecked with regalia and surrounded by objects imbued with symbolic meaning, perhaps alluding to territorial control or political authority, royal portraiture functions as a way for monarchs to construct their image, conveying to their audience how they wished to be seen. Queen Elizabeth I’s Armada Portrait of 1588 is one of the most compelling examples of how a monarch created – and therefore controlled – their perceived image. With the globe representing England’s imperial power in the Americas and the defeated Spanish Armada in the background, recalling her greatest naval victory, Elizabeth I’s porcelain skin and unwavering gaze asserts fearless dominance, not only matching but surpassing her male counterparts.
George Gower, Elizabeth I (Armada Portrait), c. 1588, Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire. Image: Archivart / Alamy Stock Photo Warhol’s portrait of Queen Elizabeth II adds to this extensive lineage of royal portraiture in a powerfully modern and unconventional way. Created by appropriating the Queen’s official Silver Jubilee portrait, a photograph taken by Peter Grugeon at Windsor Castle in 1975, Warhol presents the monarch adorned with jewels and important symbolic details. She wears the Vladimir tiara, Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee necklace, Queen Alexandra’s wedding earrings, and King George VI’s Family Order pinned to her Garter sash. Through this iconography, a sense of tradition and regal heritage is retained within the block-colours and graphic shapes of Warhol’s Pop aesthetic. Warhol perfectly balances tradition with modernity, rendering Elizabeth II as a monarch poised between the regalia of English royal history and the consumer culture of the twentieth century.
Left: Cigarette card. Image: New York Public Library
Right: Silver jubilee mug. Image: Bax Walker / Alamy Stock PhotoIn utilising the Queen’s Jubilee portrait, Warhol continued his enduring exploration of fame and mass-media consumption. One of her most recognisable images, the photograph has been endlessly circulated worldwide, including on currency, postage stamps, merchandise, and in the media. Warhol, ever enamoured by fame while also adeptly critiquing it, had an attuned sense of the power of image in creating celebrity persona. His fascination with mass-media, mechanical mass-reproduction, fame, and consumption of celebrity imagery is epitomised in the image of Queen Elizabeth, arguably the most famous woman in the world at the time. Transforming her traditional state portrait – steeped in British history – with his iconic Pop aesthetic of bold lines, bright colours and graphic form, Warhol’s portrait is as much a portrait of the monarch as it is of late-twentieth-century popular culture.
Upon the completion of the portfolio, Sir William Heseltine, the Queen’s private secretary, wrote to George Mulder, Warhol’s European dealer, to acknowledge that Queen Elizabeth II was “most pleased and interested to see” Warhol’s portraits of her. Attesting to the importance of this modernised portrait of the Queen, The Royal Collection Trust purchased all four colourways of her likeness from the Royal Edition in 2012.
Provenance
Artnet Auctions, 10 December 2015, lot 111958
Acquired at the above sale by the present ownerLiterature
Frayda Feldman and Jörg Schellmann 337
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 an Important British Collection
111
Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, from Reigning Queens (F. & S. 337)
1985
Screenprint in colours, on Lenox Museum Board, the full sheet.
S. 100.1 x 80.1 cm (39 3/8 x 31 1/2 in.)
Signed and numbered 34/40 in pencil (there were also 10 artist's proofs), with the artist's copyright inkstamp on the reverse, published by George C.P. Mulder, Amsterdam, framed.
Estimate
£100,000 - 150,000
Sold for £165,100
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Evening & Day Editions
London Auction 19 - 20 September 2024
407
This lot is no longer available.
