We’ll take a Warhol and a Rembrandt, please, Gran
Will they go for one of the Rembrandts? Or are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex more likely to decorate their new Windsor home with some of the 450,000 photographs in the royal art collection?
Decisions galore await Harry and Meghan as they prepare to move to Frogmore Cottage in the coming months, but the task of finding a suitable painting to hang over the sofa – or a quirky cartoon to stick in the loo – has just been made infinitely easier.
The Queen is understood to be allowing her grandson and his new wife to borrow their pick of available items from the royal collection. With more than 1m paintings, drawings, sculptures, pieces of furniture and other objets d’art to choose from, the couple are unlikely to need to pop down to Ikea for some frames to fill up the gaps on their walls.
The royal art collection has long provided the relatives of British sovereigns with an interior-decorating treasure trove. The catalogue of its glories stretches from masterpieces by Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Vermeer to the more modern output of 20th and 21st century artists such as Andy Warhol, David Hockney and Tracey Emin. The photograph collections include works by Annie Leibovitz and Mario Testino, the rock star Bryan Adams and The Sun newspaper’s royal snapper, Arthur Edwards.
With so many decorating options to choose from – or, as interior designers like to call them, ‘‘moods’’ – it is perhaps no surprise that Harry and Meghan, who are expecting their first child in April, have sought expert help.
The biggest hint of their likely decor comes from their choice of chief ‘‘mood’’ adviser: Vicky Charles of Charles & Co, the interior design company that created a nursery for George and Amal Clooney’s twins, Ella and Alexander, and worked on projects for Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop business.
Charles is best known in commercial circles for her work on the interiors of the Soho House private members clubs, where she perfected the luxury ‘‘shabby chic’’ look for the clubs’ outposts around the world.
Harry, 34, and Meghan, 37, are known to be fans of her style. Their first date took place at Soho House in London in July 2016 and later that summer, Meghan stayed at Soho Farmhouse, a Cotswold retreat. Ahead of their wedding in May last year, The Sunday Times revealed that some of their closest friends bought them gifts from the Soho House wedding list.
From all this it seems safe to predict that the decor in Frogmore House is unlikely to resemble the more traditional settings preferred by Harry’s brother and sister-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. When William and Kate decorated their homes at Kensington Palace and Anmer Hall, Norfolk, they hired Ben Pentreath, a friend of the classically inclined Prince Charles and known as the ‘‘interior designer for the landed gentry’’. There are not many Warhols hanging chez William.
The public caught a rare glimpse of the Cambridges’ taste in 2016, when Barack and Michelle Obama visited Kensington Palace. Pictures showed William and Kate’s taste to be more Old Master than the minimalist monochrome preferred by Meghan. Pictures on the duchess’s now-defunct Instagram account of her former home in Toronto showed white walls featuring a nude water-colour by the New York-based artist Inslee Fariss.
Luckily, there are plenty of nudes in the royal collection, though probably not from the 21st century. The Queen owns only a limited number of modern works, some of which have already been bagged by palaces or royal homes elsewhere. – Sunday Times