The Hindu : International : Gadzooks! The Prince is not amused

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, May 01, 2004

International

International

Gadzooks! The Prince is not amused

LONDON, APRIL 30. A new portrait shows Queen Elizabeth's husband Prince Philip bare-chested, with a bug sitting on his shoulder and a plant growing out of his finger (in picture).

The Prince, 82, sat for the prize-winning painter Stuart Pearson Wright four times, with his shirt on. A model posed for the chest part of the painting, which depicts the upper half of the Prince's torso, Pearson Wright said while unveiling the painting on Thursday. He said the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, which commissioned the work, rejected it. So he gave them a different version that only showed Philip's head.

The artist said the blue fly, known as a bluebottle, which he placed on Philip's shoulder, was meant to emphasise the Prince's mortality, since it feeds on decaying organic matter and is sometimes used as a reminder of death. "It's a motif that's been used throughout history," he said.

In the painting, Philip points up with his right index finger, which has four strands of cress growing from it. Pearson Wright said they symbolised the Prince's children.

The Abbott and Holder art gallery in London is selling the work, titled `Homo sapiens, Lepidium sativum and Calliphora vomitoria,' the scientific names for human, cress and bluebottle, for £25,000 (about Rs. 19.77 lakhs).

Pearson Wright has said that when Prince Philip saw the painting in its early stages, he exclaimed "Gadzooks! As long as I don't have to have it on my wall." — AP

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