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☆ King Charles III Unveils First Official Painted Portrait Since Coronation
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-14 | by ( Livia Albeck-Ripka | More About Livia Albeck-Ripka | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The 7.5 foot-by-5.5-foot portrait was commissioned by the Worshipful Company of Drapers, a medieval guild of wool and cloth merchants that is now a philanthropy. It will hang in Drapers’ Hall, the group’s baronial quarters in London’s financial district, which has a gallery of monarchs from King George III to Queen Victoria. Mr. Yeo has also painted the king’s wife, Queen Camilla, and his father, Prince Philip. He has said that the best portraits capture visual characteristics that remain relevant even as the person ages. When it came to the king, Mr. Yeo told The Times that he had noticed physical changes in their four sittings together — during which time the king was going through a metamorphosis of stature.

Persons: King George III, Queen Victoria, Yeo, . Yeo, Queen Camilla, Prince Philip, Tony Blair, Dennis Hopper, Nicole Kidman, Rupert Murdoch Organizations: Worshipful Company, Drapers, Times, British Locations: British

☆ See inside the lavish reception rooms at the US State Department
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-26 | by ( Piper Hudspeth Blackburn | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +13 min

"America's Collection: The Art and Architecture of the Diplomatic Reception Rooms at the US Department of State." Durston Saylor/Courtesy Rizzoli The Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room. Durston Saylor/Courtesy Rizzoli The James Monroe State Reception Room, which was designed by Walter M. Macomber. Durston Saylor/Courtesy Rizzoli The James Monroe State Reception Room. Durston Saylor/Courtesy Rizzoli The design of diplomacy: See inside the lavish reception rooms at the US State Department Prev NextRooms that take you back in time“America’s Collection” gives those without diplomatic credentials a chance to experience that moment.

Persons: Harry S, John Kerry, Obama, Kerry, Truman, Oz, Durston Saylor, Benjamin Franklin, John Blatteau, Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Walter M, John Quincy Adams, Childe Hassam, Edmund C, Martin Van Buren, Henry Clay, George Washington, , Francis Scott Key, Paul Revere, John Adams, Clement Conger, Edward Vason Jones, Benjamin West's, John Jay, Henry Laurens, William Temple Franklin, Bruce M, Jones, King George III, Mark Alan Hewitt, Adams, Louisa Catherine, Martha Washington, Alexandra Kirtley, ” Kirtley, Kirtley, ”, Betsy Kornhauser, Kornhauser, “, Joshua Shaw, Thomas Cole, Cole, Virginia Hart, ” —, Walter Thurston Gentlemen's, we’re, ” Hart Organizations: DC CNN, US, Truman, US Department of State, State Department, Benjamin, Thomas, James, James Madison, Henry, American, Department, Powel, York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Winterthur Museum, Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art, CNN, Metropolitan Museum of Art, River School, “, ”, Department of State, Rizzoli Electa Locations: Washington, United States, Virginia, Mount Vernon, Paris, Great Britain, Philadelphia, British, Delaware, China, American, Europe

☆ Why the first European paintings of Australian animals look so alien to our eyes
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-24 | by ( Janelle Evans | University Of Melbourne | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

To our modern eyes, the paintings lack the vitality and strength of the animals we are familiar with in Australia. So why did his paintings of the dingo and kangaroo — some of the earliest European representations of Australian animals — look so strange? "Pumpkin with a Stable-lad," a 1774 George Stubbs painting of the racehorse Pumpkin. But Stubbs’ kangaroo more closely resembles the rat-like Gerbua of Banks’ description than the creature we know today. My paintings of unfamiliar landscapes in Scotland and Ireland always seem to depict trees that look like eucalypts.

Persons: Joseph Banks, George Stubbs, Stubbs, ’ Stubbs, Banks, King George III, James Cook, “, King, ”, Sydney Parkinson, Kharbine, Captain James Cook, it’s, Janelle Evans Organizations: CNN, England, Endeavour, Royal, Society of Artists, Victorian College of the Arts, Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne, Creative Locations: England, Australia, Tahiti, Great Britain, London, Nations, Banks, Scotland, Ireland

☆ Opinion | ‘The 2024 Issue: Democracy or Autocracy?’
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-18 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

To the Editor:Re “Trump and Allies Seeking Vast Increase of His Power” (front page, July 17):Donald Trump plans, if elected next year, to revamp the administrative state, also known to conservatives as the deep state, also known to Mr. Trump as the warmongers, the globalists, the “communists, Marxists and fascists,” “the political class that hates our country.”Once revamped, this new state would be much more under Mr. Trump’s control, without those pesky independent agencies that are beyond his reach. We had a state like that in the past, headed by King George III, and decided that we did not like it, which is why we have what are quaintly known as “checks and balances,” designed precisely to prevent the president from amassing too much power. Are we really ready to replace “Hail to the Chief” with “Hail to the King”? John T. DillonWest Caldwell, N.J.

Persons: “ Trump, Donald Trump, Trump, ”, King George III, John T, Dillon West Caldwell Locations: N.J

☆ Rembrandts of 'extraordinary rarity' could fetch $10 million at auction
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

LONDON, June 30 (Reuters) - Two rediscovered Rembrandts, the last known pair of portraits by the Dutch master to have remained in private hands, could fetch around $10 million at auction next week. Signed and dated 1635, the depictions of married couple Jan Willemsz van der Pluym and Jaapgen Carels, who were close to the artist's family, have a price estimate of 5 million - 8 million pounds ($6.35 million - $10.16 million). "They are things of extraordinary rarity,” he said, adding the Amsterdam-based Rijksmuseum had analysed them. The portraits are among the highlights of Christie's July 6 "Old Masters Part I Sale", part of the auction house's Classic Week. Also on offer is a panel by Greek-born Spanish Renaissance painter El Greco, "The Entombment of Christ" (6 million - 8 million pounds) and a bust of Helen of Troy by neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova (2.5 million - 4 million pounds).

Persons: Jan Willemsz van der, Jaapgen Carels, “, they’ve, Henry Pettifer, ”, El Greco, Helen of Troy, Antonio Canova, Fra Angelico, Saint John the, Magdalen, Queen Charlotte, King George III's, Marie, Louise Gumuchian, Barbara Lewis Organizations: Christie’s, International, Reuters, Virgin, Saint John the Baptist, Thomson Locations: Amsterdam, Spanish, Bayreuth

☆ Opinion: A boast that could sink Trump
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-21 | by ( Richard Galant | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +20 min

We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets. CNN —“I’m the one that got rid of Roe v. Wade,” former President Donald Trump boasted Tuesday on Newsmax. Congress has the power to rein in the court, wrote CNN legal analyst and law professor Steve Vladeck, whose new book “The Shadow Docket” focuses on the Supreme Court. Courtesy Boaz FreundIn 2019, then-President Trump issued an executive order requiring hospitals to post the prices of common medical services and procedures. For some, its celebration of a multiracial but purely fictional British aristocracy may even be a big part of its appeal.”As escapism, “Queen Charlotte” is a success.

☆ Here’s What to Know About ‘Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story’
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-11 | by ( Kalia Richardson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

With her withering glares and colossal wigs, Queen Charlotte has become a treasured character in the first two seasons of “Bridgerton,” the steamy hit Netflix series set in an alternate, racially diverse version of Regency Era Britain. As played by Golda Rosheuvel, she is a hard-line matriarch with an ear for gossip and an eye for beauty. Now she is the subject of her own six-episode Netflix prequel series, “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story,” which tells the tale of young Charlotte (India Amarteifio) as she begins her rise to power. Viewers witness her whirlwind marriage to King George III, meet her delinquent children and come to better understand her motivations and loneliness. “‘The love of Queen Charlotte and King George united the nation’ — that’s one sentence in ‘Bridgerton,’ and to me that told a whole world,” Shonda Rhimes, the show’s creator, said in a phone interview last week.

☆ Inside Westminster Abbey during King Charles' coronation
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( Rachel Armstrong | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

WESTMINISTER ABBEY, London, May 6 (Reuters) - The explosive crescendo of "Zadok the Priest", Handel's soaring anthem composed nearly 300 years ago for the crowning of King George III, marked the most sacred moment of Charles' coronation on Saturday. Until the crowning in 1953 of Charles's mother, Queen Elizabeth II, the coronations of kings and queens were seen only by those in the abbey. Yet elements of the ceremony, which was a largely solemn and ritualistic service with just dashes of modernity, remained distinctly intimate for those inside the abbey. Charles himself looked occasionally meek, as when he knelt before the altar with four members of the clergy surrounding him. STATE AND CHURCHBefore Charles's arrival, representatives of nine non-Christian faith groups processed through the abbey, in keeping with the king's commitment to safeguarding religious freedom.

☆ If Charles wants a coronation, he should pay for it himself
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Opinion Ahmed Twaij | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

If Charles III wants the pomp and ceremony of a coronation, he should instead use a negligible portion of the vast sums of money he has accrued over the years thanks to his birth-given status as a royal. Spain’s last formal coronation was all the way back in 1555, while Belgium’s monarchy doesn’t even have a crown with which to conduct a coronation. It also found that a plurality of 45% believe Charles is “out of touch” with the experiences of the public. However, these tourist dollars might well continue whether or not the royal family does. Maybe if a tighter budget is applied to the British royal family, Charles rather than taxpayers will be paying the next time he opts to board a £32,000 ($40,200) charter flight to attend a James Bond premiere.

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