Truly captures all the blood on the English royal family's hands, drenching their history.
Kudos.
i'm seeing a lot of posts about how bad this painting is and idk man i think this painting is actually awesome? whatever the stated intention or official interpretation might be, to basically anyone outside the specific pro-royalist liberal bubble it's a perfect illustration of the ruling class. like obviously, yes, blood, it's blood, the background is blood, his clothes are almost indistinguishable from the blood, every medal and pin and award meant to symbolize his authority almost unreadable in all that red. it's so on the nose it's almost like, yeah, okay guys, we GET it, the past and present of the royal family is characterized exclusively by the working class peoples whose deaths were necessary to keep that family alive, tell me something i DON'T know π
but deeper than that, i love that his face is so naturalistically lit. all things being equal, divorced of context, if i saw this painting in a museum 100 years from now i'd probably think it was gorgeous. it's a good, striking composition! yet today, now, in this context, his expression reads to me like someone who wants to project power and confidence, at the precise moment when he is moments away from drowning. i swear you can see in his eyes a resignation to his own death, and the death of the monarchy, as at last all that blood catches up to him. the monarch butterfly is fascinating as well. is it about to land on his shoulder, or has it just taken off? there's a tension at play in giving the most potent symbol in the portrait such an ambiguous relationship with the subject. is Charles chosen by nature to be The One True King or whatever? it would be so easy to just have it resting on his shoulder in a presumed "yes", but it's not. the butterfly could just as easily be fleeing the all-consuming flood of this family's sins, refusing to drown alongside this piteous old man.
like, yes, it's royalist propaganda, but if you throw this painting out for what it is, you're throwing out most of art history. this piece exists, and we can either read it or let it stand as an uncomplicated monolith. personally i'd rather read it to its own demise instead
