Princess Kate's official portrait was unveiled Friday and it’s a good thing she likes it — and this isn’t the 15th century.
Otherwise, artist Paul Emsley’s head might be on the chopping block.
The curtains hiding Kate Middleton’s picture had barely parted before London’s art critics began blasting Emlsey for making her look like a vampire and worse.
“Kate Middleton is — whatever you think of the monarchy and all its inane surrounding pomp — a pretty young woman with an infectious smile, a cascade of chestnut hair and a healthy bloom,” Charlotte Higgins of The Guardian newspaper wrote. “So how is it that she has been transformed into something unpleasant from the ‘Twilight’ franchise?”
“I’m really sad to say this is a rotten portrait,” Daily Mail art critic Robin Simon weighed in.
Waldemar Januszczak of The Sunday Times likened it to “a giant Polaroid.”
“He made her look older than she is and her eyes don’t sparkle in the way that they do and there’s something rather dour about the face,” he sniffed.
But the opinion that really matters is Kate’s and she has reportedly described it as “amazing.”
“I thought it was brilliant,” she added.
Her husband, Prince William, concurs.
“It’s absolutely beautiful,” said the second in line to the British throne.
Emsley, an award-winning painter born in Scotland and raised in South Africa, said he’s not surprised by the critical pans.
“A person whose image is so pervasive, for an artist it is really difficult to go beyond that and find something which is original,” he said.
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