Andrew Festing MBE PPRP | The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee 2022

1980s

Andrew Festing MBE PPRP

Royal Hospital, Chelsea

Her Majesty The Queen

238 x 144 cm (94 x 57 ins)

Andrew was born in 1941, he was educated at Ampleforth College and RMA Sandhurst. He was commissioned into The Rifle Brigade where he served until 1969.

Festing worked at Sotheby’s in 1969 and was Head of the British Pictures Department from 1977-1981, where he became Sotheby’s chief expert for British Pictures. He painted many portraits whilst in the army and at Sotheby’s, and took up fulltime portrait painting in 1981.

Festing became a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in 1989, and was President from 2002-2008. He was awarded a MBE in 2007 for services to the arts, and holds an Honorary Degree from Northumbria University.

Notable commissions include Her Majesty The Queen and other members of the Royal Family on a number of occasions; official portraits of the House of Commons and the House of Lords in session; official portraits of Speakers Boothroyd and Martin; four group portraits of all the famous English Cricket players in the last 40 years for Lords; six group portraits of the staff at Holkham Hall in Norfolk. Festing has painted some 750 portraits in the last 30 years.

Andrew Festing on painting H.M The Queen:

‘When you paint someone like The Queen you have to change the way that you do things, so I did a sketch of the Queen and then transferred that onto the larger canvas, since you can’t really turn up at Buckingham Palace with a seven foot canvas. The two pensioners who also appear in the portrait, RSM Daley & RSM Loat, came to my studio in London to sit for me for studies.’