By ALAN FREEMAN


Saturday, December 22, 2001 – Print Edition, Page A9 (GLOBE and MAIL)

LONDON -- Art experts may love it, but Britain's press is clearly not amused. "It's a Travesty Your Majesty," screamed the headline in the mass-circulation Sun newspaper yesterday beneath a glum-looking Queen, her chin with a disturbing five o'clock shadow, in a new royal portrait by Lucian Freud, considered by many to be Britain's greatest living artist. "The expression is of a sovereign who has endured not one annus horribilis but an entire reign of them," wrote The Times. "The Merry Monarch it isn't." "It makes her look like one of the royal corgis who has suffered a stroke," added Robin Simon, editor of the British Art Journal, who said the left-hand side of her face makes one wonder, "Who the hell is that?" The 79-year-old Mr. Freud, grandson of Sigmund, has presented the portrait to the Queen's Royal Collection as a gift. It will go on display in May at Buckingham Palace as part of celebrations marking the Queen's Golden Jubilee. So far, only a photograph of the painting has been made available. The director of the National Portrait Gallery, Charles Suarez Smith, called the tiny portrait -- it measures 23.5 centimetres by 15.2 -- "a thought-provoking and psychologically penetrating contribution to royal iconography." "We'd be delighted to hang it. . . . . This breaks the mould of royal portraits which tend to be commissioned from highly traditional artists for highly conventional clients. I really think both parties should be congratulated for what is really quite a brave thing to do." William Feaver, Mr. Freud's biographer and curator of a major retrospective of the artist's work planned for the spring, called it "the best and most important" royal portrait in Europe since the Spanish royal family posed for Goya two centuries ago. "Freud has not painted her like the icon we see everywhere on stamps and coins," Mr. Feaver said. "He's made her out to be a real intelligent person." Mr. Freud, who is best known for his brutal nudes and stark portraits, is well known to the Queen, who has twice honoured him. A spokesman for Buckingham Palace said the portrait is unusual because, normally, the Queen poses only in response to a request from a country or a military regiment. Mr. Freud asked to paint this portrait.