No official commission has been made for an artist to record the coronation of King Charles III on May 6. New music has been commissioned for the day from Judith Weir, the King’s Master of Music, among others, and Poet Laureate Simon Armitage is expected to produce a poem, but no space has been found for an artist.
There have been official artists at coronations since at least the 17th century, and in 1953 a range of painters were invited to depict the event for Elizabeth II, with the resulting work now in the government art collection.
Wenceslaus Hollar recorded the coronation of Charles II in 1660, George Nayler for George IV in 1821 and Frank Owen Salisbury for George VI in 1937. By 1953 there was a plethora including LS Lowry, Edward Ardizzone, John Stanton Ward, Kenneth Rowntree , Laura Knight , Edward Bawden, Terence Cuneo and Feliks Topolski.
Hundreds of designs
Topolski was a prolific Polish-British painter and graphic designer who died in 1989. His grandson Lucien Topolski is due to reopen his studio on May 2 under London’s Hungerford Bridge for an exhibition of his grandfather’s work on the occasion of the coronation of Charles III, and in an attempt to revive the practice of artistic reportage. Prince Philip was so delighted with the designs of Feliks Topolski in his A coronation album– in fact a strip of hundreds of drawings that attracted crowds, the official procession and culminating with the Queen being crowned in state – that in 1959 he commissioned the artist to create a 29 meter long mural of the day from the coronation of Elizabeth II for Buckingham Palace, where it remains in the Lower Corridor.
“There seems to be a kind of disconnect now between the value we place on art and the critical eye of the artist”
“It’s amazing if there is no official artist recording the event in the kind of reportage that Feliks made famous,” says Lucien Topolski. “There seems to be a kind of disconnect between the value we place on art and the critical eye of the artist. Feliks represented a tradition of observation that we risk losing. Instead, he organizes a team of students from the London College of Communication to unofficially continue the tradition of the coronation and revive Topolski’s craft production. the Chronicle magazine.
In 1953 the artists were commissioned by the Government Art Collection, but this time requests were channeled through the Department of Culture, Media and Sport to Buckingham Palace, which did not replied only with “no comment”. The National Portrait Gallery has confirmed it is not commissioning any artists, “although we will seek to reflect this historic event in the collection”, a spokesperson said. The Royal Academy of Arts, whose monarch is traditionally “patron, protector and supporter”, was not consulted, says its president, Rebecca Salter.
