2020

Miriam Escofet

Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

Portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II

140 x 100 cm (56 x 40 ins)
Oil on linen over panel

Miriam was born in Barcelona in 1967. She moved to the UK in 1979.

Having graduated in 1990 in 3D Design from Brighton School of Art, she started painting soon after and has exhibited widely and internationally, including many solo exhibitions.

Miriam was selected for the BP Portrait Award exhibition several times and was regularly selected for The Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibition, where she was elected to membership in 2020.

Miriam was awarded the first prize for the BP Portrait Award in 2018.

Miriam Escofet on her painting of H.M The Queen:

‘This portrait was commissioned in 2019, the year after I won the BP Portrait Award with a portrait of my mother, which brought me into the frame for this commission. So in my mind both works are somehow linked. I wanted to paint a portrait of The Queen that felt intimate and aimed to express her human qualities, rather than a more traditional, grand and regal representation of her’.

The artist, on meeting H.M The Queen:

‘I was struck by several qualities: firstly by her radiance, but also her keenness, her down-to-earthness, her humour and her warmth. All of which I wanted to some- how capture in the painting and I used the gold of the chair and the white of her hair to create a focal point of light around her, like an aura.

The composition reflects various aspects of the room in which the sitting took place, but reconfigured. The work also contains several symbolic touches and an anamorphic illusion in the design of the teacup.

The first sitting took place at Windsor Castle in July of 2019, the second sitting was in February of 2020, just a week before the country went into its first lockdown. I finished the painting during the long lockdown and it was unveiled to The Queen digitally from the Foreign Office in July 2020, making this the first Zoom unveiling of a Royal portrait!’

Miriam Escofet RP Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

The Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibition in honour of The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee 2022.

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