Express. The Queen as she’s never been seen

Artist Dan Llywelyn Hall has produced what he hopes is a portrait that gets behind the formal image of the 87-year-old monarch and shows her to be “a thinker”.

His imposing 5ft by 4ft canvas, commissioned by the Welsh Rugby Union to mark the 60th anniversary of the Coronation, was unveiled yesterday at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium by the First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones.

Labour politician Mr Jones hailed the expressionist-style portrait as a showcase for Welsh talent saying: “This is a fantastic piece which thousands of people visiting the stadium every year will have the chance to enjoy.”

But several art critics begged to differ.

One who declined to write about it for fear of causing embarrassment, confessed: “It’s ghastly. It makes me want to throw up.”

Mr Hall, a 32-year-old Cardiff-born artist who has won critical acclaim for his landscapes and portraits of two First World War veterans, Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, said he was not worried what the critics say, adding: “I’m not remotely interested in how people perceive my work.”

The Queen posed for him for an hour at Windsor Castle late last year in the White Drawing Room, wearing a deep red woollen dress and a daffodil motif Diamond Jubilee brooch and sitting in an ornate chair with her hands in her lap.

She chose the colour of the dress and the three daffodils on the brooch as symbols of Wales and Mr Hall said: “It was the perfect outfit.”

She talked animatedly to him as he worked.

Mr Hall, a huge royalfan, said: “She was chatting the whole time, very chatty, a great conversationalist.

“I was desperate to do something that showed her as a thinker, that was getting beyond this formal, very guarded person. I wanted to convey a sense of her warmth. You sense there is no element that is contrived or forced about her. She is a very natural person.”

His portraits of the First World War veterans, whom the Queen met several times, have been displayed at Windsor Castle and are now a permanent feature of the Royal Collection. Discussing them was his opening conversational gambit.

But the talk soon spread. “It was very wide-ranging. We talked about Windsor, about the area itself, gardens, and the purpose of art,” he said.