City artist commissioned to paint the Queen

Press, 11 May 1977, Page 16

City artist commissioned to paint the Queen

The Christchurch artist, Vy Elsom, has painted an official portrait of the Queen which will be presented to Lancaster town, England, on June 5 to mark Her Majesty’s Silver Jubilee. Mrs Elsom believes she is the first New Zealand artist to be commissioned to do a portrait of a reigning monarch of Great Britain. The life-like portrait in oils

on canvas is sft by 3ft 6in (just over 1-j.m by Im) unframed, is still in the last stages of drying off. It shows the Queen sitting in a carved gilt chair in the Great Hall at Windsor Castle, wearing a shell-pink satin pearlembroidered gown, the sash of the Order of the Garter and other decorations, a diamond and pearl-drop tiara, diamond and pearl necklace and earrings. Vy Elsom had to paint the portrait from photographs taken for the Silver Jubilee by the Royal photographer, Peter Grugeon. She did, however, get several close-up views of the Queen when she was in Christchurch early in March.

The artist and her husband, Mr Stephen Elsom, will fly to London on the same plane as the heavily insured portrait in time, for the presentation at Lancaster Town Hall by Mrs Elaine KellettBowman, Conservative member of Parliament for Lancaster, who commissioned the painting.

Vy Elsom painted a portrait of Mrs KellettBowman's family, also from photographs, last year. She started it in England and finished it in her studio in Garden Road, Fendalton.

“That portrait evidently pleased Mrs Kellett-Bowman so much that, unbeknown to me, she wrote to the Queen’s private secretary (Sir Martin Charteris) asking for Royal consent for her to commission me to paint an official portrait of the Queen for Lancaster, Mrs Elsom said yesterday. “Then came Mrs Kellett-Bowman’s letter asking me to do the portrait and cable back ‘yes,’ which I did promptly.”

That was in February. Next came the colour photographs from Buckingham Palace. “I had to paint the portrait very quickly — it took less than three weeks — to allow for drying time and to have it ready for the presentation, therefore I had to avoid all slow-drying oils,” she said. Because she had to work fast, Vy Elsom found the commission quite exhausting and a bout of the flu in the middle of it did not help. But she found it a very satisfying and exciting portrait to paint. “I have tried to keep firmly in my mind the need 'to capture the Queen’s likeness as a woman rather than an austere personage,” she said, “and to get her lovely warm smile, her brilliant blue eyes and lovely complexion.” Painting the portrait from photographs was not an insurmountable problem. Her main difficulty, she said, was to avoid a static expression and a “wooden” figure in the absence of a sitter’s animation which is communicated to the artist in a studio. “Though I have painted portraits from photographs before, I was very glad officials of the Internal Affairs department, who had been advised that I had been commissioned to do the Royal portrait, made it possible for me to get some close looks at the Queen when she was here recently,” she said. “But it was still quite a traumatic experience to be asked to paint the Queen — even to be near her. I felt my critical senses, as an artist, dry up.” Most portraits of the

Queen are painted from photographs; she seldom gives sittings. Vy Elsom paints mainly portraits and specialises in children and women, the best known of which is her picture of Dame Ngaio Marsh. Mrs Elsom won the first prize in the 1969 Kelleher Art Contest for her selfportrait and first prize in an international art contest in Australia for water colours more recently. She is an elected member of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts and a former councillor of the Canterbury Society of Arts, of which she is a long-standing working member.