CHRISTIAN FURR ‘THE QUEEN WAS SO FUNNY’
Not many people can say they’ve sat with the Queen, let alone have the title of being the youngest portrait artist ever to paint her. Christian, now 56, says, “I got the initial call in 1994 and they said to me, ‘Are you sitting down? The
Queen would like you to paint her portrait’.”
The artist, who was only 28 at the time, says the Queen had asked for him specifically after admiring one of his pieces. “There was something about that portrait that triggered her kind of interest,” he says. “The first sitting happened in March 1995. So I had a lot of time to be very nervous.”
Nerves aside, though, the artist approached the royal commission in the way he would any other project – with lots of research. And that led him to feel that previous artists hadn’t quite captured the essence of her personality.
He explains, “It felt like they were a bit scared to go closer to the Queen and I knew I didn’t want to do that. So I had something to react against. I composed the painting accordingly, and when I look at it now, it reflects the opulence of the time. It changed the course of my life, which I’ll always be grateful for.”
In terms of what the Queen was like, Christian says, “I remember I was in a sitting once, and I was concentrating on something and thinking, ‘I’ve got to get this right’. And the Queen was bopping around listening to some music outside that she clearly enjoyed. I said, ‘Oh, do you mind keeping your head still?’ She sort of looked at me and she said, ‘Isn’t it still already?’
“But she was so funny, she had a brilliant sense of humour. There was lots of conversation. It was very much a relaxed time. There’s definitely that element of magic when you’re there,” he adds.