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John Merton (1913-2011)

Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022) 1989

Metalpoint on gesso-prepared board | Diameter 42.5 cm (sight) (image) | RCIN 452738

Bow Room, Buckingham Palace

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  • John Merton has worked all his life in a meticulous technique with frequent references to the art of the Italian Renaissance, quoting specific portraits by artists such as Botticelli and Giovanni Bellini and, as here, often using the fifteenth-century medium of metalpoint. His portrait of Queen Elizabeth II is one of a number of circular images, mostly of female sitters, produced in the late 1980s and early '90s (his male portraits of the same period were usually rectangular in format). Merton has always regarded the framing of his portraits as essential to their effect, and these circular images were all enclosed by a fillet with a pronounced craquelure and set in a deep square frame with distressed and painted gilding, made to Merton's specifications. The portrait was commissioned as part of the Order of Merit series.

    Photographic survey techniques have long been a fascination for Merton. During the Second World War he commanded the Army Photographic Research Unit at the Gunnery School, Larkhill, where he developed a system of photographic reconnaissance referencing known as the Gridded Oblique, and he has consistently exploited photographic methods for the portraits painted and drawn over a sixty-year career. In a short sitting Merton makes hundreds of slides of the subject with a stereo camera, exploring combinations of lighting, attitude and expression, and subsequently works from these using a binocular viewer. Once the portrait is almost complete a second short sitting allows the artist to adjust the emphases from the life.

    Dated lower centre 1989

    Catalogue entry from Royal Treasures, A Golden Jubilee Celebration, London 2002
    Provenance

    Commissioned by Queen Elizabeth II for the Order of Merit portrait series (presented to Queen Elizabeth II by the artist)

  • Medium and techniques

    Metalpoint on gesso-prepared board

    Measurements

    Diameter 42.5 cm (sight) (image)

    58.3 x 58.3 x 3.8 cm (frame, external)

  • Other number(s)