{"id":54354,"date":"2025-04-27T09:02:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-27T09:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/54354\/"},"modified":"2025-04-27T09:02:20","modified_gmt":"2025-04-27T09:02:20","slug":"happy-and-glorious-tatlers-june-cover-celebrates-the-king-and-queen-with-an-exclusive-portrait-from-royal-artist-phillip-butah-as-their-majesties-mark-their-20th-wedding-anniversary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/54354\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy and glorious: Tatler\u2019s June cover celebrates the King and Queen with an exclusive portrait from royal artist Phillip Butah, as Their Majesties mark their 20th wedding anniversary"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the time he got to secondary school, St Bonaventure\u2019s in Forest Gate, Butah was regularly winning \u2018artist of the month\u2019, and his paintings were pinned up on the wall so that everyone could see them. It was a teacher at St Bonaventure\u2019s who secretly entered one of his portraits in a national competition \u2013 called Young Artists\u2019 Britain: The Prince of Wales<\/a>\u2019s Young Artists\u2019 Award \u2013 which would end up being a real turning point for Butah. \u2018That was the big one for me. I was just 16 and I got to meet the Prince of Wales. That\u2019s when I realised that art really could open doors for you.\u2019 Butah went on to paint Charles in 2009, and was invited to Clarence House<\/a> for sittings. He was struck by the genuine interest taken by the now King in his career, which has continued to this day.<\/p>\n

Butah\u2019s big break came in 2023, when he was invited by the King to join him and the Queen as the official tour artist on their state visit to Kenya. It was \u2018magical\u2019, he says. \u2018But they work very hard, and that is probably something that people don\u2019t understand\u2019<\/p>\n

Philip Sinden<\/p>\n

The Young Artists\u2019 Britain competition was also instrumental in forging a friendship between Butah and the singer Ed Sheeran. It was Sheeran\u2019s parents who were in charge of organising the award and the accompanying exhibition at Hampton Court, and they took the young artist under their wing, introducing him to their son Ed. The two talented and hard-working teenagers developed a great mutual respect for one another. \u2018We both understood that art takes time,\u2019 Butah tells me. Their collaboration culminated in 2017 in a biography entitled Ed Sheeran: A Visual Journey, with words by Sheeran and illustrations by Butah.<\/p>\n

Butah credits Sheeran\u2019s parents for encouraging him to go to art school, and he took a course in fine art at Central Saint Martins in London. \u2018I was still building my craft and trying to get my portraits to where I wanted them to be,\u2019 he reflects. \u2018I think I have enough discipline to motivate myself, so I am not sure what I actually got from art school, but you do live and learn and I probably absorbed more than I realised.\u2019<\/p>\n

When he left art school, he kept on working and writing to people he admired, offering to paint their portraits. \u2018I used to write to all sorts of people but especially athletes \u2013 they are the kind of people you want to draw. But I got so much rejection, it was sometimes tough to keep going.\u2019 Keeping going, though, was essential to his sense of being: \u2018Part of who I am is unlocked when I am drawing,\u2019 he says. \u2018So it is important to me to keep doing portraits. I love watching people. I really look at them and I think, \u201cThis person is an oil painting, this person is a charcoal drawing,\u201d and it\u2019s my way of making sense of them. I am painting a face, but as a portrait artist you need to understand the person behind the face \u2013 their emotions, their secrets, their soul. Often when I am painting a face, I won\u2019t put the eyes in until last, because they have a way of looking back at you.\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By the time he got to secondary school, St Bonaventure\u2019s in Forest Gate, Butah was regularly winning \u2018artist…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54355,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[7709,7730,7731,126,1760,18753,7710,519,448,22392],"class_list":{"0":"post-54354","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-british-royal-family","9":"tag-charles","10":"tag-charles-iii","11":"tag-features","12":"tag-king-charles","13":"tag-magazine","14":"tag-royal-families","15":"tag-royal-family","16":"tag-royals","17":"tag-textaboveleftsmall"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114409121043322745","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54354"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54354\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}