Day the Duke and his portrait artist became firm friends
WHEN Alexander Talbot Rice arrived at Buckingham Palace to paint the Duke of Edinburgh, he was understandably on edge. One of the youngest artists to be commissioned for a modern royal portrait, he had no idea what to expect.
However, the ice was swiftly broken when the Duke strode into the yellow drawing room, where the painter, then 33, was setting up, and ordered him to take his jacket off.
“I did as I was told,” Mr Talbot Rice told The Sunday Telegraph, “only to notice, to my absolute horror, that my flies were undone. He burst out laughing and said: ‘You should get yourself a zipper.’ ” Formalities abandoned, the Duke, dressed in his Garter uniform for the portrait commissioned to mark his 82nd birthday, settled down for the sitting. The two got on like a house on fire as he regaled the artist with tales of his beloved carriage driving.
Following that first sitting in 2003, they went on to become firm friends.
The Duke, a keen painter himself, befriended many of his portrait artists, often inviting them to events as his guest, keen to engage them in discussion about one of his favoured pursuits.
The portrait struck such a chord that within months, Mr Talbot Rice, now 52, was working on another, commissioned by the Duke himself – a rare occurrence. Prince Philip wanted a painting of himself driving his carriage and invited the artist, who was classically trained in portraiture in both Florence and St Petersburg, to Windsor for the weekend to take some preparatory photographs of him in action.
The carriage driving portrait, which was for the Duke’s personal collection, now hangs in the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace.
In 2005, Talbot Rice began a portrait of the Queen sitting in the gold State Coach and also painted the Duke for a third time, a commission for the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights.
The Duke would write to Mr Talbot Rice, who was later commissioned to paint Pope Benedict, Margaret Thatcher and Prince Charles, often sending newspaper clippings he thought were of interest.