Update, 6/13/24 at 9:10 a.m. ET:
The Philip Mould Gallery shared an update on the condition of King Charles III‘s portrait after it was vandalized, insisting via social media, “We are pleased to report that contrary to any speculation, #TheButterflyPortrait by Jonathan Yeo remains unblemished and resolute.”
Original story below:
King Charles III‘s official royal portrait got a new look courtesy of protesters in London.
Activists from an organization called Animal Rising paid a visit to the Philip Mould Gallery, covering the painting with two large stickers. In an Instagram video shared Tuesday, June 11, a blown-up image of Wallace from the Wallace & Gromit cartoons was placed over Charles’ face. A second person placed a speech bubble on the painting which read, “No cheese, Gromit. Look at all this cruelty on RSPCA farms!”
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BREAKING: No Cheese Gromit! King Charles Portrait Redecorated” the video was captioned.
The organization referred to Charles, 75, as a patron of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), a British charity promoting animal welfare. The caption also encouraged the king to “drop the Assured Scheme,” which seeks to provide ethical food labels and protect farm animals.
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Animal Rising has also shared a link to a petition against the RSPCA and a report claiming “animal suffering and widespread regulation breaches” have occurred on RSPCA Assured farms throughout the U.K.
Charles’ first portrait since his coronation, painted by British artist Jonathan Yeo, was unveiled in May and will remain on display in the London gallery until later this month.
When fans got their first glimpse of the portrait, which shows Charles standing stoically in a Welsh Guards uniform with a butterfly hovering over his shoulder, its vibrant red color scheme was met with mixed reactions. Yeo, 53, subsequently attempted to clarify his vision.
“The red was inspired by the Welsh Guards, but I wanted the painting to be a little more contemporary and not get in the way of seeing the face and the personality,” he explained last month, per Hello! “The color was an early experiment and then I sketched it out and worked on the face, and the face and background worked so well. … It was a nice mix of the traditional and the contemporary.”
The internet had a field day with theories about the artist’s inspiration, and Yeo has enjoyed following along with the conversation.
“My [17-year-old] daughter was much too keen to show me all the crazy stuff about the painting on TikTok,” he told The Sunday Times in a May 19 interview. “She’s … had the best day of her life with all of the conspiracies about the painting, saying I’m a Satanist and Illuminati.”
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While there have been plenty of hot takes online, Yeo’s most important critic — Charles himself — was pleased with the final product.
“When I showed it to him back in November, when it was sort of three-quarters done … certainly the face was done, body was sketched and the color was mostly pretty much as it was, in the end,” Yeo said on Hello! magazine’s “A Right Royal Podcast” last month. “If he’d been appalled, I think, I might have rethought it and toned it down a bit. But he didn’t seem that way.”
Yeo had also braced himself for Queen Camilla‘s reaction. “When [Camilla] looked at it and smiled straight away, I thought, ‘OK, phew!’ That’s the important one,” he told the Boston Globe in May.
