King Charles III, 75, was captured in the first royal portrait since his ascent to the throne, drawing a wide variety of reactions.
Jonathan Yeo, a British artist who previously painted official portraits for Prime Minister Tony Blair and Sir David Attenborough, painted the monarch in a red Welsh guard uniform with a butterfly on his shoulder, atop a vibrant red background.
The painting, which will hang in London’s Draper’s Hall, took more than two years to complete and got a glance from the king and queen ahead of its Buckingham Palace debut.
Per the BBC, Queen Camilla told Yeo, “Yes, you’ve got him,” upon seeing the piece.
But others were quick to draw comparisons to some quite non-royal imagery, flooding the royal family’s Instagram comments with reactions, before commenting was disabled.
Some noted that the eight-and-a-half-foot-tall portrait “looks like he’s bathing in blood,” while one person stepped forward to ask if he was “supposed to be a Tampax.”
On X, comparisons ranged anywhere from “hell” to “rhubarb pie filling,” but few were kind.
King Charles new portrait seems to have depicted him burning in hell, or it seems like it anyway. pic.twitter.com/skZwQguC6U
— BladeoftheSun (@BladeoftheS) May 14, 2024
king charles portrait looks like rhubarb pie filling. pic.twitter.com/qpKUqg5ULN
— .:RiotGrlErin:. (@RiotGrlErin) May 15, 2024
New King Charles III portrait got me like https://t.co/m3wxtHTKW0 pic.twitter.com/45xipBeOAC
— Prequel Memes (@rPrequelMemes) May 15, 2024
Silver lining: King Charles’ portrait is invulnerable to Just Stop Oil attacks! ✅ pic.twitter.com/EPL30RJlTj
— The Royal Rogue (@the_royal_rogue) May 14, 2024
Critics and journalists weighed in, too, including the Times of London’s chief art critic Laura Freeman, who asked, “Has a portrait of a blue-blooded British monarch ever been so very pink?”
Royal historian Kate Williams told CNN that the painting had been described as a “portrait for a horror film,” adding that it only added to growing image challenges for the crown.
“We see the king surrounded by this red, which really evokes this terrible history of oppression which we see in the British Empire, in slavery,” Williams said, citing criticisms of the portrait.
The unveiling comes as the royal family seeks to rebuild from a number of PR crises, notably their handling of Kate Middleton’s public absence earlier this year.