Story of Elizabeth II’s first portrait as queen

Throughout 2022, a series of celebrations will take place in the UK to pay tribute to Platinum Jubilee Of Elizabeth II. The Royal Collection Trust has just made its contribution to the monarch’s historic milestone by recovering the first official portraits of Elizabeth II in the role of queenmade seventy years ago by the famous photographer Dorothy Wilding. Elizabeth was immortalized by Wilding the February 26, 1952, just 20 days after his accession to the throne.

Wilding – prima donna in history to be tasked with taking official photos of a British royal, he had already immortalized Elizabeth’s parents: King George VI and the Queen Mother. The young Elizabeth snapped well 59 photos. In some of the portraits Elizabeth appears without tiarawearing an off-the-shoulder dress, pearl earrings and a necklace that was given to her in South Africa in 1947.

Twenty-four of the first official portraits of the sovereign will be exhibited in the state rooms of Buckingham Palace in the summer of 2022. The photos will be part – together with jewels and carriages – of an exhibition that will tell the accession to the throne of the young queen. Which she was surprised by death of the sovereign father in February 1952. When George VIat the age of 56, passed away in sleep, 25-year-old Elizabeth and her husband, the Prince Philipwere in Kenya. They had replaced the king, too ill to travel, on a visit that should have included Africa, Australia and New Zealand.

Cut off from communications, Lilibeth and her husband they learned of George VI’s death late. Philip was the first to be informed of her and it was he who told Lilibeth, after suggesting a walk in the park. Mike Parker, the prince’s assistant, observed the couple from afar: “They paced back and forth and he talked to her, talked to her, talked to her …”. The Queen spent the next few hours writing letters and cards to cancel the appointments of the following days and apologize for it. Towards evening her private secretary, Major Charteris, joined the monarch in her room, finding her “sitting perfectly erect, with the air of who she was. ready to accept her fate“. It was he who asked her: “What name will Majesty take? “. And she: “Mine, of course … Elisabetta ».

They have since passed seventy years. A milestone that makes the ninety-five year old Elizabeth one of the longest-lived sovereigns in history. More than her they reigned alone Louis XIV of France (72 years and 110 days), the Thai ruler King Bhumibol Adulyadej (70 years, 126 days) and king Johann II Liechtenstein (70 years, 91 days). But for the queen of records, that of longevity is a primacy veiled in melancholy. If his reign lasted so long it is because his father George VI died too young.